“It amazes me what people can get their hands on,” said Hood. “And, Benson, don’t make some dumbass comment about letting guns walk.”
The detective shrugged and looked back at his unmarked car. “Maybe three’s a crowd here, Agent Hood.”
“Yeah. Good luck.”
“You got a card? I’ll give a courtesy call on this if you want. I got an ex-brother-in-law with ATF. You guys earn your money.”
Hood wrote his cell numbers on the back of an ATF card and handed it to the detective, who gave Hood one of his cards in return.
16
The black town car glided to a stop in front of Bradley Jones’s Valley Center ranch house, the dogs closing around it, barking but never touching the car. It was two days later, just before noon, and the sun hung in a blanched, cold pre-storm sky. Bradley sat at the long picnic bench on the covered deck. He had worked his four tens for the week and now had three days to himself. The call had come to his cell this morning just before sunrise: Chief Miranda Dez would be there at noon. The meeting would take one hour. Wonderful, he thought. She had taken the bait. Either that or she’d bring some big deputies and arrest him.
A large uniformed deputy held open her door and Dez stepped onto the drive, straightened, and glanced up at him through her aviator sunglasses. She was forty, fit, and handsome, and reminded Bradley somewhat of his mother, Suzanne. It was more her attitude than appearance. She turned slowly, looking around the property. Her black hair was pulled back in a taut French roll. She wore a tailored tan winter-weight uniform with a necktie rather than the patrol-ready open-collared blouse and T. Her badge was polished, her chief’s collar stars were bright, and her tie clasp and nameplate were perfectly horizontal in relation to the necktie.
She strode into the thicket of dogs without acknowledging them. They sprang and skulked out of her way and she climbed the steps to the porch. She carried a laptop in a black leather case. Bradley stood and pulled out the picnic bench opposite his and she set the computer on the table and sat.
“Where did you ever get the money to afford all this?”
“My mother and some good investments.”
“You wouldn’t think a schoolteacher and part-time car thief would be worth millions.”
“She was smart.”
“Smart enough to get herself shot and killed? Jim Warren at CID has other explanations for your. . comfortable lifestyle.”
“My mother’s life is a past thing, Chief Dez. Jim Warren is a good old man with bad ideas. I hope you didn’t come here to talk about them. I hope you’re here to talk about our futures.”
“Our futures. Good. But can you find me a cup of coffee here in the present?” She nodded down to the deputy, who was still standing beside the town car. Before going inside, Bradley watched him get in and drive to the far side of the parking area, which was shaded by an enormous oak tree and had a nice view of the pond.
He set two mugs of coffee and a quart of milk on the rough, old picnic table. Dez already had her laptop up and booted and she positioned the machine so they both could see the screen.
“First of all, Deputy Jones, where did you get this stuff?”
“It was shot on location in the states of Baja California, Campeche, and Yucatan, Mexico, four months ago.”
“By whom?”
“Mexican law enforcers. The real ones, not the corrupt ones. There were several shooters. I can’t reveal my sources until later. The point is, the footage and images are authentic and untouched by editors or editing programs.”
“Tell me what I’m looking at.” She slid the mouse across to Bradley
“This is Charlie Hood. He’s one of our deputies, on loan to ATF. A very distant acquaintance of mine.”
“He was involved with your mother.”
“Here he’s involved with a crooked Tijuana cop named Rescendez. You can see the Jai A’lai Palace in the background. Hood doesn’t know there’s another TJ lawman working a cell phone camera from one of their police cars.”
“What are the other cops looking at?”
“This.” Bradley clicked the mouse and a picture of a duffel bag filled the screen. It was zipped open and there were bricks of plastic-wrapped cash inside. One of the bricks had been opened to reveal the hundred-dollar bills.
“The TJ cops are on the payroll of the Gulf Cartel,” said Bradley. “The money is drug profits, collected in the United States. Hood drove it south. Remember, this was a few days before Benjamin Armenta was killed in the shootout.”
“Armenta’s money.”
“Correct. Now, here’s Hood in Juarez. The guy on his right is Valente Luna and the fat guy is Julio Santo. Both Ciudad Juarez cops, both button men for Armenta.” He clicked the mouse and the screen went to video. Like most of the video and stills on this memory stick, this clip had been shot from fairly far away by Mike, but he had used good equipment. Hood and his friends looked like small players on a small stage and Bradley felt Zeus-like looking down on mortal Charlie Hood. “Now, here they are leaving Reynosa.”
“Where’s Santo?”
“Killed in a shootout about five hours previous.”
“Why no pictures of that?”
“I have no idea. I was not the cameraman. My informants tell me that Carlos Herredia’s people found out about Hood and the money. Unfortunately, they sent mere children to take it away, and Hood and Luna killed all five of them.”
Dez took off her sunglasses and set them on the table. “How could Hood have slipped off leash like this?” she asked.
“When he attached himself to the feds, it gave him a chance to do what he wanted. Which, apparently, was to go private and upriver.”
“Unreal.”
“Real.”
“How much money is he carrying?”
“Beats me,” Bradley said with a smile. “They said a million but I wouldn’t know.”
Bradley clicked forward through a series of still photos taken at some distance: Hood and a boy walking toward a city during high wind and rain; a shelter in a small Mexican town, where the boy hugs a woman; Hood and Luna waiting on a rooftop while a helicopter comes down from a troubled black sky. “This is the village of Tuxpan, just after Hurricane Ivana went through. Hood got swept away and came up with the boy. Next up, Merida. See, he’s heading south still, toward Armenta.”
The next video showed Hood on a busy street, buying from vendors, looking around, apparently nervous. The palms swayed with post-Ivana wind, and puddles of standing water pocked the old colonial streets. “Luna is at the hotel with the money,” said Bradley. “They took shifts guarding it. Now, these next shots are of a camp in Yucatan, a few miles from Benjamin Armenta’s castle.”
“That’s where the Mexican Army stormed in and killed him.”
“Not exactly. The men you will see next are soldiers of the North Baja Cartel-far, far from home. With orders to take the castle and murder Armenta. Watch.”
The camp wasn’t much more than a crude opening in a thick jungle. As the video rolled, Bradley saw the first sunlight coming down through the trees, and the dirty, exhausted faces of the men. They cursed at the cameraman in Spanish, gestured. The camera caught the SUVs, partially hidden from above, under cut fronds and branches. Then the camera panned left, where at a distance Charlie Hood and Valente Luna could be seen, trudging after a young man along a trail toward the camp.
“Hood’s got a shotgun over his shoulder and no money,” said Dez, looking at Bradley.
Mom’s eyes, he thought. Not how they look but how they see.
“He was never going to give it to Armenta in the first place. Neither was Luna.”
“Then where is it?”
“At the hotel in Merida.”
“So there’s been a change of plans.”
“I’d say so.”
The next video was shot from an airplane, its engine working away with a high-pitched whine. There was a bounce to the picture and its subject was some distance away. Slowly it came into view, a multistoried building and compound surrounded by dense jungle.