When the thumbs were finally removed, Bradley could speak. “The teeth are almost too good. But the lip healed up well.”
“Perfecto. And with most importance, you are now free to be doing your work with me again. I must hear all details tonight at dinner, of how this became possible. I have a new jet. And tonight there are important guests here for you to meet. Come now.”
Felipe had already laid his scattergun across the trunk of the Cayenne and begun stacking the bins of cash and clothes on a hand truck. Felipe had designed and welded the secret compartments beneath the floor of the storage area of Bradley’s Porsche, as well as the front-end containers that could only be opened electrically, using a car battery. Felipe was small and goatlike and sharp faced, and he appeared very old but he moved with a lithe ease. Bradley knew that he would weigh out the bricks of cash and set aside his courier’s fee, which was based on the total amount transported. Good couriers were highly valued in the drug world, not only for their honesty, which was a prerequisite, but for their ability to smell out dealers who had turned to informing. Bradley, as an LASD deputy with close friends in narcotics, had special powers in this area and had identified two such young men, who were no longer.
He stood off to the side of the big auto trailer and looked at the shiny new Fords. Even the dusty journey from the Hermosillo plant to El Dorado had not ruined the sheen of their paint where it showed between the protective sheets of white plastic, or the occasional glimmer of chrome. There were four Fusions, four Lincoln MKZs, and four Ford Tauruses, in varying colors. He wondered if these cars might have something to do with what Rocky was hinting about.
Herredia introduced the men not by name but by their positions in Ford Motor Company, Hermosillo Manufacturing Plant, Mexico. The young, tall one was the assistant director of quality control and the short, stubby one was the transport manager. Herredia said they had personally delivered the cars and were here to make sure the fourth and final leg of their new Fords’ journey began well.
“For the U.S. market?” asked Bradley.
“Yes,” said the transport manager. He was dressed in a crisp guayabara and jeans and tan lace-up work boots. “Hermosillo now has the highest quality rating of any Ford plant in the world. J. D. Powers amp; Associates have proven this.”
“How come you brought them through Baja?” asked Bradley. “That means you had to trailer them south to Guaymas, then ferry them to Santa Rosalia, then trailer them all the way here. If you went straight north from Hermosillo to Nogales, it’s less than half that distance.”
The tall man looked coolly at Bradley and drew on a cigarette. He had a patrician face and a pale olive suit and a white shirt open at the collar. “What concern are our freight routes to you?”
“I’m just curious why you go four hundred miles out of your way.”
Herredia stared dolefully at Bradley, then he laughed and his eyebrows shot up in a mirthful display. He turned to the men. “See? I told you my gringo partner has a sharp eye for opportunity. I’ll bet that he already has a strong suspicion of why you bring your new Fords hundreds of miles out of their way to the United States.”
“He can suspect whatever he wants,” said the tall one. “He is a danger and I don’t approve of this.” He flipped his cigarette into the gravel and stepped on it, then walked around the trailer toward the compound. Bradley could see him between the Fusions, glancing back at him.
• • •
Dinner was an unusual banquet consisting only of meats, seafood, asparagus, and various alcohols, part of Herredia’s slimming diet. He wanted to lose twenty pounds. Bradley had often seen him doing his two miles a day in the big saltwater pool out by the cabanas, though it looked to Bradley more like pounding than swimming. Herredia attacked the water as if it were the enemy.
At dinner the tall quality control assistant director, Arturo, argued that the Mexican drug cartels were stifling the common people with their violence and there would someday be a grassroots uprising against the cartels. Herredia boomed back that the uprising would be not against the cartels but against the government, which did little to protect the people. Bradley sided with Herredia. The transport manager, Caesar, agreed that the people would eventually tire of cartel violence and there would be a popular revolt against someone.
“Using what as weapons?” asked Herredia. “Shovels?”
“Corazons,” snapped Arturo, tapping his fist against his heart. “Connected by cell phones.”
Herredia leaned forward and Bradley saw his brows knit down over his dark eyes. “Arturo, your brave heart is angry because you believe you are a hypocrite. But you are not a hypocrite. I understand what the government does not understand, and that is that some of the people are dissatisfied. You, for example, are men of great ambition. Yet what does the government allow you to do with such ambition? Look around you at what I have made with my own hands and brains. You have two of the best jobs in all of Mexico but is that enough to satisfy you? To work for the great gringo makers of cars? To lick the shoes of J. D. Powers for thirty years? No! You want more. You demand more. So you come to me with your idea, not to Ford.”
“Ford would not have liked our idea,” said Caesar, smiling.
“You are wrong about the people and the narcos,” said Herredia. “The people need the narcos. The people are the cartels. I have rebuilt churches from Tecate to Mulege. I have built schools in Catavina and Guerrero Negro and San Felipe. I have donated two million dollars for a hospital in Santa Rosalia. I have paid for medicine and operations and funerals and weddings and shrines for people I do not know. I have given millions of dollars to charities and churches. For every Mexican in Baja who tolerates the government, there are ten who love me.”
25
That evening after dinner the men followed Felipe to the coops where Herredia kept his fighting birds. The building was a prefabricated metal structure designed for agriculture or light industry. It was coyote and dog proof, air-conditioned and heated for steady temperature. Felipe waited outside with his shotgun as the others went in. Bradley smelled the dank stink of feathers and the sweeter smell of the scratch on which the birds fed. The overhead fluorescents glowed down with faint shivers. Herredia was renowned for his fighting cocks, some of which were scheduled for battle the next day in La Paz, five hundred miles to the south. Thus, the Lear jet, Bradley had learned.
Bradley and the Ford men followed Herredia on the tour: first the incubation room, then the exercise runs, the sparring pit, then the various pens. Each rooster was separated from any others except for the breeding pairs. They were handsome birds, and bold of eye. Bradley had seen cockfights and hated them, hated the blades and the pain and the selling of bravery for entertainment. Though he also knew that solid money could be made.
On the way back toward the pool the Ford men talked with Felipe up ahead while Herredia fell back to walk with Bradley. Bradley looked out at the mountains, black and jagged. He had spent many nights here, all but a few without Erin, and therefore she was always poignantly in his mind at El Dorado because all he could do was imagine her and picture what she was doing. The cell phones wouldn’t work and the satellite phones were a security risk, so virtually every night here was a night without her or her voice, a tribulation.
“Come this way, Bradley.” They veered around the pool and cabanas and walked back to the drive where the trailer of new cars stood in the moonlight. “I need a driver for these cars. Caesar and Arturo have made the delivery only once and I believe they are not reliable. This trailer has very dependable state-police escorts to the border at Tecate. My friends at Mexico and United States customs will make sure that there are only minor inspections, if any. As you probably know, a trailer carrying new cars from a U.S. factory is not a thing of suspicion. In Mexico, it is a thing of pride. In the United States, it is the great Ford Motor Company. And not to be suspected. That is the beauty of this idea. Almost no suspicion. I’m surprised that Arturo and Caesar could think of it.”