The Famous and the Dead (3 page)

H
oo
d drove to the Monterey Restaurant in El Centro, just under an hour from Buenavista. The sun-blasted sign had faded from yellow to a kind of opaque cream and the lettering from black to pale gray, but "
BEST BURRITOS IN THE WORLD
" was still visible. He used the drive-through and parked in the shade facing the Monterey, the windows of his Charger down. Hood was a muscle-car guy and he liked it that ATF had a deal with Chrysler. The Charger had civie plates and black paint and plenty of get-up-and-go, though the Imperial County sun had no trouble finding it.

In the rearview he checked his diamonds. Five. They shined wicked cool and perfect for an arms dealer. Two months ago when they were installed, Hood was surprised by how different he felt: piratical, subversive, and an odd combination of marked and free. For those first two weeks his tongue had found the hard little chips every waking minute, reminding him of his new self. They were of course removable by a dentist.

He had also gotten on loan from ATF a diamond-studded Rolex. And grown his hair long, which added to his sense of separation and newness. He wore suits in pale shades, tailored to obscure the holster and weapon at the small of his back and his ankle gun. He wore striking shoes, often two-tone. Over the weeks it had become easier and easier to be Charlie Hooper—one dapper, unmistakable, and certainly unorthodox businessman. Hood was warming up to the tooth bling and the hair, which was almost to his shirt collar.

Using the rearview mirror again, Hood tilted his chin down and ran his hand under his forelock and lifted the hair. He studied the slender knife scar. It was nearly six inches long and nearly perfectly aligned with his hairline. Because it had been treated promptly by good doctors and sutured from the inside, the scar remained low profile, understated. His new long hair easily covered it. It still itched occasionally. When the cut was first made, it had bled terrifically, just as it was intended to, allowing a bad man to get away. Veracruz, Mexico,
M. Doblado
street. Four months ago.
I'll get back to you on this one, Mike
, thought Hood.
I will get back to you
.

Hood enjoyed his lunch. He didn't find the Missourians at the Monterey, but the burrito rocked.

•   •   •

He went down the street to Buster's Last Stand and talked to Buster about purchasing twenty-thousand rounds of .40 caliber. He balked at the price and wondered out loud why .40 caliber had gotten so popular lately.

“Latest answer to the same old question, Hooper,” boomed Buster. “Stopping power and how many cartridges you can fit in a magazine.”

Hood gave him a dismissive look. “Buster, you know I buy and sell. I've got a collector back in Virginia, licensed for automatics. Wants old machine guns like his great-granddaddy might have used in a war—full size, not the subs. Operational, not replicas. Something with the smell of history still in the barrel.”

“We don't do much full-auto here. I'll keep my eyes open, though. Try Crossroads of the West. It's in Texas this month.”

“Sure. Good show.”

“Always a big 'un.”

Hood gave the man a card with “Charles Hooper/Firearms/New and Collectible/Ammo/Reloading/Accessories/Licensed” embossed on it and a phone number and website address handwritten on the back. No federal firearms license number was on it. “This is just in case you lost the last one. Let me know if you find some good old machine guns.”

“Hooper. I can come off that price a little on the ammo. Five percent. Best and final. You pick it up here you'll save a fortune in shipping.”

Hood gave the man a disappointed smile and walked out.

•   •   •

Three more gun stores, no Skull. He went to Walmart and bought Beth a bottle of her favorite wine, the best box of chocolates he could find, and a flagrantly sentimental card. He had been trying extra hard to please her these last few months yet he'd come to feel obvious and exposed, like a magician who'd revealed a trick and the trick would no longer work. He knew she felt the same. Walking back to his car he saw the sun setting on this late winter day and felt a deeper chill settling in.

Hood took a seat at the Palomino Club, well drinks half price. He was apparently the first customer of the evening. He set his hat crown-side down on the stool beside him and gave the bartender a brief smile. She was a hard-faced Latina in a black-sequined Palomino Club tank top, a brief skirt, ankle-high boots. “Suzy,” with a
z
and a
y
, said her nameplate.

Hood nursed a beer and talked to Suzy about the economy. El Centro had been hard hit and had one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. Six years ago she'd been selling real estate, she told him. Those were the days, no credit/no problem, she was too busy selling homes to even take a vacation. Then all of a sudden those days were gone. There were tracts of new homes not getting sold, other tracts not even getting finished. Now they were nothing but brand-new ghost towns, tumbleweeds blowing down the dirt streets, security guards trying to keep out the vandals, coyotes running through in packs like wolves.

Suzy had a smoky voice, like another Suzanne whom Hood had once known. And high cheekbones and dark eyes, like hers. In the dusky light of the nightclub Suzanne Jones wasn't hard to imagine. Hood let his memory drift across time. It glided easily, a skiff on a glassy bay.
Five years ago,
he thought.
Then all of a sudden those days were gone.

Suzy went quiet and looked hard at him. “What do you do?”

“I buy and sell vintage cars, mostly American made. And other things that people want.”

“Such as?”

“I do some firearms. Licensed stuff, all legit. Nothing goes south. It started as a hobby, actually.”

“Hmmm.” She lifted a tumbler of what looked like sparkling water, and looked over the top of the glass at him. “I've got a colorful little three-eighty. County wouldn't give me a permit to carry, but it's in my purse and I don't care who knows. I walk out of here at night with tip money, it makes me feel better.”

“Let's hope you never have to use it.”

“You don't sound like a gun dealer.”

“What's a gun dealer sound like?”

“Well, he'd be curious what make and model I chose.”

“Suzy,
colorful
was kind of a giveaway. How about a Sig P two-thirty-eight? With the rainbow titanium finish. That's the one the Gun Bin puts in their front window, with the purses and boots and accessories. Chances are, you bought it there.”

She smiled again and this softened her face and seemed to bring light into it. “Okay. So you're a dealer. Another beer?”

“Next time.”

She swept away his empty glass and dunked it into the rinse water. Hood stood and counted out his money, then pulled his phone off his belt and leaned closer to her. “These three gentlemen should be here in El Centro right about now. I'd appreciate a call.”

Hood handed her the phone and she scrolled through the six shots. He set a Charlie Hooper card on the bar.

She looked past the phone at him. “I thought you were a cop. I shouldn't have told you about my gun.”

“Your secret is safe with me, Suzy. If and when you'd like to purchase another sidearm, let me help. You might want real stopping power someday.”

She gave back the phone and glanced at the card. “I've
got
real stopping power when I'm not slinging drinks and wearing whore's clothes.”

“I can see that.”

“If they come in, I'll call.
Charlie Hooper.
It doesn't say anything on your card about vintage cars.”

Hood put a finger to his lips, then set the gambler on his head.

She gave him a minor smile, then walked away, waving over one shoulder. Suzanne Jones, he thought, walking across the dining room of her ranch house, Valley Center, California, August 2008.

•   •   •

Hood was made pensive with this, but the Fuzzy Dice was loud and cheerful with a younger clientele, a mix of Anglo and Latino and even a group of Asians in a booth. Some jocks from San Diego State stood at the bar in their Aztec clothing. There was gangsta rap and
banda
on the jukebox and a small dance floor crowded with intimate couples. Hood smelled the perfumes and colognes and the hair products and the high-pitched smell of alcohol. He ordered a beer and sat at the far end of the bar, near the bins of cocktail garnishes and napkins.

Just after eight o'clock the three men from Russell County walked in, the beefy Peltz in the lead, followed by thin Clint Wampler. Next came Skull, head shiny and held high, eyes hard. Last came El Centro businessman Israel Castro, a man well-known to Hood.

There was a mirror behind the bar. In it Hood watched as two young couples stood in unison when the Castro party approached their table, swiftly gathering up their drinks to abandon ship. Israel smiled and shook hands with one of the men.

The last time Hood had seen Castro was four years ago, in the dead of night, the rain pouring down on a little border town called Jacumba. Hood had caught a bullet in his back that night. He remembered the cold mule kick of it knocking him into the mud as it went through him. He'd lost consciousness believing he was dying.

But I'm alive
, he thought.
I am not dead. Neither is the past: It's swarming all around me.

When Castro went into the restroom, Hood walked out of the Fuzzy Dice and got into his car. He set his hat on the passenger seat, then rolled down the windows and called Yorth. An hour later the four men came out. Castro got into a silver Ford Flex with dealer tags and the three others boarded a red Jeep Commander with Missouri plates. Wampler drove. Hood followed them three cars back to the Pueblo Lodge on the east side of town. It was an older motel with freestanding concrete-block casitas painted pumpkin orange and a sign out front with an arrow that lit up one bulb at a time, drawing customers in. The Commander swung in beside a white F-150, raised with big tires. Hood continued past the entrance and headed for home.

A
waiting his grand inquisitor, Deputy Bradley Jones slouched in a conference room chair, legs crossed and boots on the table beside his hat, rounding off his snagged left thumbnail with a pocketknife. He was twenty-two years old, clean-cut and good looking, a second-year patrolman. He had been a rising star with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department but was now a falling one, suspected of involvement in the L.A. drug trade, and more. By all signs that he could gather, LASD was going to eat him alive and enjoy doing it.

Lieutenant Jim Warren, Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau, came through the door, set a laptop on the table, and sat across from the young deputy. He wore pressed jeans and black wingtips and a crisp white shirt. His face was craggy and brown and his hair was a gray buzz cut. Bradley knew that the feared Warren came from a checkered background: Decades ago he had founded the Renegades, a gang of mostly white deputies, some of whom did some bad things to people of color. Warren had turned them over to Internal Affairs, but caught the brunt of the backlash and the hostility of his own department. Years later he became an IA crusader, and Bradley figured it was his atonement. Bradley put him at seventy if a day and wondered why he hadn't retired over a decade ago as most cops would have. How much did atonement did Warren need?

“Feet on the floor, son.”

“Sir.”

Bradley put his feet down and Jim Warren squared the laptop and opened it. “Tell me about Carlos Herredia.”

“Not again.”

“Why not again?”

“You think if you make me repeat myself enough times I'll finally say what you want to hear.”

“Just once more, Bradley. I'll listen better this time.”

Bradley spun through Carlos Herredia's well-known bio: nicknamed El Tigre, head of the North Baja Cartel, fingers deep in L.A. drug distribution through Eme and the Florencia gangsters. Mota, junk, meth, coke, murder, kidnapping, extortion.

“And enemy of the Gulf Cartel,” said Warren. “Don't forget that.”

“What's left of the Gulf Cartel. I'll tell you this one more time—I've never favored Herredia's cutthroats in L.A. over the Gulf's cutthroats in L.A. The way I do things here is simple, sir: A gangsta is a creep is a punk is a dirtball. They're all the same. So I don't play favorites on patrol. And I resent you self-righteous dinosaurs making me out to be a bad guy. Of course I don't mean you, personally, Lieutenant Warren. Personally, I respect and like you.”

“My lucky day.”

Bradley folded the blade down and slipped the knife back into his pocket. He gave Warren a flat glance then focused on the repaired thumbnail.

“I've got sworn testimony against you, Brad. Octavio Leyal knows Herredia's organization from the inside. He says Herredia pays you to leave his L.A. distributors alone and focus on the Maras and Eighteenth Street, who are teamed up with the Gulf. He says you're a courier for the cash runs south, taking Herredia's money back to him. He says he's seen you in Baja, at one of Herredia's compounds known as El Dorado. Quite a place, according to Leyal.”

“I know, sir. But Leyal is a low-level criminal and a liar. You want to believe a prison snitch over a second-year deputy? When did you sell your soul?”

“Easy now.”

“There's nothing
easy
about this. Can't you just figure out what you're doing, then do it?”

“We're close. I do appreciate your cooperation.”

“You want me to just walk away from the job? Well, I can't, because I have a pregnant wife and a son I'd like to feed. Oh, I made your watchers weeks ago. The new ones, the two men so bland looking I'm not supposed to know they're following me.”

Warren looked over the screen at Jones and shrugged, then tapped something on the keyboard. “You're friendly with Eme and Florencia people here in L.A. Such as Rocky Carrasco. Whose son you rescued from kidnappers on your first day as a patrol deputy.”

“I should
apologize
for that?”

Warren studied him. “You knew exactly when and where Herredia's men would try to buy a hundred machine pistols up in Lancaster. The Love Thirty-twos. One of the runners being Octavio Leyal.”

“I was working an informant, a damned good one. All of it came from him.”

“But you could never deliver your informant to us for questioning.”

“He did what people under pressure do, Jim. He vanished. I've told you a hundred times, too.”

Warren tapped the keyboard again. “Tell me about those two weeks you took off last October. Four months ago.”

Bradley sighed and picked up his hat and slouched back down into the chair. The hat was the Corazón Espinado, a shantung Panama designed by Carlos Santana. His wife had given it to him. Bradley loved the graphic of the guitar stabbing through a human heart and considered the ninety-five-dollar cost a bargain. “One last time? I took Erin to Mexico. She was pregnant and exhausted from work and we wanted to relax. You've seen my passport with the customs stamps on it, so you know I'm telling the truth.”

“You fished for tarpon and snorkeled.”

Bradley looked at Warren for a long beat, then turned his attention to the hat in his hands. Finally he nodded and closed his eyes.
Think up something pleasant,
he thought. He imagined Erin, pregnant with his son and lovely. He imagined her onstage, belting one out. He imagined his home in Valley Center, the barn and the big oak tree. He imagined Carlos Herredia's compound, El Dorado, and its sprawling adobe house and casitas, and the pool that shimmered with cool salt water, and the golf course upon which Herredia happily cheated, and the thoroughbreds and the food and wine and the time Herredia had thrown Bradley's gift—an expensive fishing reel—into the air and blown it to bits with one round from a .50-caliber Desert Eagle handgun.

“Snorkeling and tarpon fishing in the Yucatán. You live large, Bradley. Don't you?”

“You exhaust my soul.”

“Explain your riches.”

“My mother left me a bundle and my wife is a popular performer. You know these things. I've told you. You've seen my tax returns—good enough for the IRS, I might add. If you don't believe my answers, make up some of your own.”

“You know, Bradley, when IA kicked this investigation up to me two months ago, I was pulling for you. I'd followed your ups and downs. I figured you were a spirited deputy, young and lucky. But the more I talk to you and the people around you, the more I think you're in it up to your eyes. Carrasco and Florencia, the North Baja Cartel. Your arrest and interview reports—ninety percent of your narcotics contacts comes from Mara Salvatrucha and Eighteenth Street, both lined up with the Gulf Cartel. Then suddenly you vanish for two weeks to the Yucatán with two more of my deputies, on a so-called fishing trip, and who dies in a gun battle five miles from where you're fishing? Benjamin Armenta, head of the Gulf Cartel and Herredia's biggest rival. All three of you deputies come home sick and beat up. You've got two teeth missing and your lips are split open, Cleary's got a broken nose and wrist. Vega has an infected arm and a thousand mosquito bites and she comes down with dysentery within the week. Want to tell me about the great tarpon hunt again? Maybe add some truth?”

Bradley put his feet back up on the table. It disturbed him that in the last month or so Warren was apparently getting new and better information. Where? His friends, fellow deputies Caroline Vega and Jack Cleary, were also being questioned by the Criminal Investigation Bureau, and he wondered now if one or both of them might have finally made a mistake, or cracked. The truth was that none of the deputies had even seen a tarpon. For Bradley, those two weeks had been the longest and most miserable of his life, although he had finally gotten the only thing he wanted: Erin, freed from Benjamin Armenta, her abductor. Caroline and Cleary had gotten what they wanted too—some dark action and lots of cash.

Bradley looked at his shoes on the table. Ankle-high boots actually, expensive ones. Worry ate at him. Octavio was bad enough, but what if Caroline and Cleary were having trouble keeping their stories straight? Or what if Rocky was saving his ass by singing? Then there was another, far worse scenario, one he was almost afraid to consider: Charlie Hood talking his crazy brains out to CIB. Hood had also been a participant in the great tarpon hunt. But these days he reported to ATF, not LASD, and he'd stayed down in Mexico for another week, then quietly returned stateside to continue his furtive ATF work along the border. Which had left him off the sheriff's department's radar. Or was he? If Warren found out that Hood had been in Yucatán, then they were all dead in the water because Hood wouldn't lie. Hood was too square to lie. Hood had the goods on him in more ways than one. Hood was a self-righteous pain in the ass. If Hood was talking to Warren, Bradley knew he would fall hard and far.

So he told Warren again about the four of them fishing the Bacalar Lagoon, described the Hotel Laguna where they stayed and the Panga they rented and the fishing they did. Told him about the fight that he and Cleary got into with a half dozen very rough local fishermen who didn't care for gringo tourists fishing in their flats. He again described the food and the rooms, and the weather, and plenty of details, right down to which songs Erin played on a cheap guitar in a small cantina one night. And told again the story of dropping his camera into the dark warm water on the third day, losing probably fifty pictures that would have established his story better than did the Hotel Laguna owner who, speaking on a poor long-distance connection, was only able to loosely corroborate it.

“Why didn't Cleary or Vega bring a camera?”

“I told them not to because mine was waterproof.”

“If it was waterproof, why didn't you jump in after it?”

“Did. Failed. Deep.”

Warren was leaning against the wall now, arms crossed, listening. For a long moment he seemed distracted, then he came back, pushed away, sat back down. He looked unamused. He tapped away on the laptop, then turned the computer to face Bradley. Bradley saw the image of his mother, Suzanne, on the screen, an enlarged version of the photo on her Los Angeles Unified School District employee badge.

“It's been five years since she died,” said Warren.

“I know how long it's been.”

“You must miss her.”

Bradley looked at him. “You have deep insight.”

“My mother died when I was young.”

“You told me that.”

“Bradley, did Suzanne Jones really believe she was a direct descendant of Joaquin Murrieta? Or was that more of a marketing decision? Or maybe a delusion?”

“Marketing.”

He looked at the picture of his mother for a long beat. Then he conjured the first time he had seen the head of El Famoso, Joaquin Murrieta, severed and preserved in a glass jar, hidden in their Valley Center barn. No delusion. He'd trembled.

“Marketing,” Bradley said again.

Warren took back the computer and typed some keys and turned it around again for Bradley to see. Now his mother shared the screen with her alter ego, Allison Murrieta. Allison wore a black wig over Suzanne's wavy brown hair, and a black satin mask with a crystal fastened to the cheek. She held a small derringer up to her lips, as if blowing off the smoke. Bradley stared at the image. The picture was a hit during her crazy summer of '08. It was everywhere you looked. That was the summer that Allison held up fast-food places and boosted expensive cars and donated bags of cash to her favorite charities, posing mid-robbery for cell phone photos from bystanders. The summer she'd run wild with Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputy Charlie Hood. The summer she'd died. Bradley hadn't looked at this particular picture in a long while. His mother and Allison Murrieta. Very different. But the same. Strange, he thought, for maybe the thousandth time, that in all of L.A., out of the ten million people in the county, not to mention the rest of Southern California, only one other person had seen the pictures of Allison and recognized her for who she really was. Charlie Hood.

“Do you believe you're related to an infamous outlaw? Do you feel that your blood is calling you into a life of crime? That you're battling your genetic destiny?”

“Don't be ridiculous, sir.”

“Deon Miller's murder is still unsolved,” said Warren. “And the witness description of the shooter matches you pretty damned well.”

“It matches a million other young men in L.A., too,” said Bradley. Miller was the young gangsta who'd shot down Allison Murrieta, believing he'd get a reward. Shotgunning Deon Miller had given Bradley genuine satisfaction, but it couldn't touch the loss of his mother.

“Bradley, I'm going to let you help this department. As of tomorrow you're assigned to the STAR Unit.”

“No. I can't do the STAR Unit.”

“You will do it or resign.”

“Lieutenant, this assignment is worse than a demotion. It's everything I don't want to do.”

“Report to Sergeant Gail Padilla in the morning up in Lancaster. She'll be your supervisor. How bad can it be, Jones? You go out to the schools, you tell the kids to stay off dope and away from gangs. They look up to you. You tell them a story or two. Show them your sidearm. Show them what good people we sheriffs are. You hardly break a sweat. What could be easier?”

Warren turned the computer back, pushed some buttons, closed the lid. “We're going to do this one more time, Jones. But we'll have a polygraph examiner ask the questions. I'll let you know when.”

He stood up and walked out. It was dark already and the night-shift deputies were rolling into the employee parking area in their pickups and Mustangs and Camaros and SUVs. He got into his Porsche Cayenne Turbo and gunned it when he hit the avenue.

His hands were tight to the wheel. His shirt billowed in the blast through the open windows and when the winter air had cooled his skin and calmed, if only a little, his riotous heart, Bradley pressed the back of his head into the rest and drove fast.