The Border Lords Read online

  Later Herredia offered Bradley good brandy and a Cuban cigar and they sat on the ends of the chaise longues leaning forward like men unable to relax. The women swam and drank. Felipe sat in a chair across the pool with the moths buzzing the tiki torch above him and his shotgun across his lap.

  “What did Rocky tell you?” asked Herredia.

  “Nothing.”

  “But Rocky cannot say nothing.”

  “A little, sir. He said you had an idea for me.”

  “Yes. Yes. Listen. Another story from El Tigre. There is a man, an American citizen. He is a partner of mine in the United States. I had to trust him but I never trusted him. He did little things for me. He bought some product at a high price. Okay, I figure he’s a fool. He loans money to a friend of mine and lets the man not pay back. Okay, he’s a puto who wants buy big friends. He flies a plane. He uses his plane to move some product for me. He makes me a good deal. Fine, fine, fine. He has money. He buys homes in the U.S. and rents them to my men. This is good for us both. Real estate is down. Rent is cheap. The houses are nice. My men take good care of them. They have big screens and good air-conditioning. They are in good neighborhoods. Then suddenly my men are dead. Slaughtered. They were no more than boys. Murdered, right there in the safe house. The safe house! I suspect that Armenta was informed. He’s trying to run me out of California, as you know. This man, then, his name is Sean Gravas. He rents to me but informs to the Gulf Cartel, correct? He’s a traitor. Imagine his arrogance. He allows my men to be murdered.”

  “That’s a terrible thing, Carlos. The safe houses were a good idea. I’m surprised that there might be a leak in your organization.”

  Herredia’s eyes flashed. “The leak was Sean Gravas. But his betrayal and murder of my men was not enough. Now he wants to buy guns from me.”

  “The Love Thirty-twos?”

  “Es verdad! He wants one hundred Love Thirty-twos. I guess that he wants them for Armenta. I think that Armenta saw one and now he wants to have them for himself.”

  Bradley considered. He drew on the good Cubano and swirled the brandy in his snifter. “You could sell Gravas the guns and then kill him and take them back.”

  Herredia glowered at him. He had thick eyebrows that moved tellingly—up toward each other in the middle and he looked soulful; down and he looked stoked for violence. Now the eyebrows were down. “I could rape his wife and behead his children while he watches, too. I could detach his face and have it sewn onto a soccer ball and kick it down the street. But I am not that kind of man.”

  “I meant no insult.”

  “It is gringo arrogance to insult the Mexican. Call him an animal. A beast.”

  “I’ve never said nor believed that. With all due respect, Señor Herredia, I descend from one of the greatest Mexicans of them all.”

  “Murrieta,” Herredia said quietly. He smiled.

  “You’ve seen the proof of this, sir.”

  “It was an unforgettable moment.”

  “Tell me your plan.”

  Now Herredia’s eyebrows went to neutral. “I have a better idea what to do with Sean Gravas. I want to give him to you. As a gift. He is an American partner of the Gulf Cartel. He has crossed an important line. And I want you to give him to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He can spend his life in prison. Here. See the man. When he meets with Mateo, my secret spy took his picture!”

  Herredia produced a cell phone, touched the screen with his big suntanned fingers, then let Bradley scroll through six pictures of Sean Gravas. He was big and tattooed and looked every inch a gun and meth man. Bradley felt his heart do a little jig. An American cartel partner would be a splashy prize, he thought. An American who housed killers on U.S. soil and arranged murders and used his own plane to fly dope and money around? An American buying one hundred machine pistols from one Mexican drug cartel to sell to another? A trophy that would be his to award to a deserving law enforcer. Charlie Hood would die for a chance to impress his Blowdown handlers with Sean Gravas and atone for some of the one thousand Love 32s they let slip by last year. But maybe Hood wasn’t the right deputy to gift in such a spectacular way . . .

  “What do you want in return?”

  Herredia raised his eyebrows in a show of innocence, and spoke softly. “I ask for nothing.”

  Bradley smiled inwardly. He nodded and sipped the brandy. “I would arrange for Gravas to be arrested in the act of buying the Love Thirty-twos from your men, correct?”

  Herredia nodded and sipped his brandy thoughtfully.

  “So we keep the guns.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the money.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “What about your men? We couldn’t let them just walk away.”

  “They will be men without value. American boys purchased for money to do a job. Take them. They will know nothing.”

  Bradley knew that one hundred new Love 32s, made by his friend Ron Pace and outfitted with the sound suppressors and extra-capacity magazines, would cost Herredia right at one hundred thousand dollars. Who knew what price Sean Gravas could get from Benjamin Armenta and his murderous Gulf Cartel.

  Bradley felt another bump of excitement. The whole idea was crazy in a way that appealed to him. Outlandish, yet Herredia could easily afford to punish a traitorous partner, sacrifice more than a hundred grand cash and forfeit a hundred new machine pistols—considering the hundreds of thousands of dollars that he received from Bradley every week at El Dorado. And, Bradley thought, if you considered that other couriers were bringing Herredia like amounts of drug profits from elsewhere in the United States, the cash and guns were just drops in Herredia’s bucket. And he had many buckets. Bradley wondered what Herredia wanted in return.

  He thought about the idea for a moment before he spoke. “How can I know about this deal between Gravas and the North Baja Cartel? I’m a simple patrol deputy.”

  “Because you are a good cop. And you are lucky, too. You say you have knowledge that an American criminal, Sean Gravas, may be buying guns. You don’t know details yet. But you believe your informants have good information. Of course. And as it will turn out, your informants are truthful. You will be congratulated. You will come under no suspicion at all.”

  “Why not?”

  Herredia smiled. “Because American policemen do not do such things.”

  Bradley smiled, too. For a man with blunt lusts for money and power, and a sixth-grade education, Herredia sometimes had an incisive worldview. He was right. An American cop might sell a little confiscated dope on the side. Might let a working girl stay free to work, for an occasional favor. But no one would suspect a young deputy of helping one Mexican drug cartel destroy another.

  Bradley knew that some of his fellow LASD deputies would wonder how he could be so lucky. The same deputy who had rescued a kidnapped boy on his very first LASD patrol? He’d need answers for questions like that. And there were other problems.

  “What if he’s ATF or DEA?” Bradley asked. “They’ll spring their trap and take the money and guns with or without your help or mine. And if any of your people are unlucky enough to be caught, too, they’ll lean heavily, Carlos. American prison terms are not light. That’s how the feds work their way up to people like you.”

  Herredia drew on his cigar and looked down at the coal. “Then I have only sacrificed a few weapons and a small amount of money that was not yet mine.”

  “Sacrificed for me? Why? I don’t understand why you would do that.” He was dying to understand. What did Herredia really want from this? It was much more than a simple favor. It had to be.

  “This Mr. Gravas does strange things,” said Herredia. “He growls viciously at people. He claims to have performed a miracle of healing upon a dog. He now flies around with this dog in the plane beside him. He has this dog baptized. Or so he claims to my men. He is seen in Puerto Nuevo the night that six gunmen are slaughtered yet no one sees or hears a thing. He’s too crazy to be with DEA or ATF
.”

  “What if it’s just part of his cover?”

  “Then he is corrupt DEA or ATF. Murderous. This makes him even more valuable. My friends in the Baja State Police will share evidence with your friends in the news media. A very good story, yes? The flying gringo is buying guns for the Gulf Cartel. Where else can this man get one hundred fifty thousand American dollars in cash? There will be abundant testimony. And I will give up evidence of his ownership of the safe house where the sicarios died. And more evidence that he knew his renters were bad men. The ATF and DEA do not rent housing to Mexican killers on American soil. We can be sure of that.”

  Bradley thought this over. “No, I wouldn’t think so.”

  “Then you accept the gift?”

  Bradley imagined the benefits of having provided the tip that had taken down an American working for a Mexican drug cartel, and led to a small fortune in arms and money—all of which would be retained by the LASD under asset forfeiture laws. Working behind the curtain, choosing the right people to take down Sean Gravas, he could earn goodwill that would trickle down to him for years into the future. An investment, he thought. Something you do now to earn dividends later.

  “The first ten guns will be delivered to Gravas next week in Ensenada,” said Herredia. “This makes it easy for both of us. The other ninety will be in L.A. They can be built almost instantly, now that Ron Pace can build them without interference from American police or ATF.”

  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.”

  “No existen balas capaces de matar nuestros sueños.”

  “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.”

  16

  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.