Bradley sighed but still didn’t look Hood in the eye. “Yeah, those were the Baja nights.”
“Tell Erin about the thousand Love Thirty-twos you sold to Herredia. Tell her about the deal you made with Mike. Tell her about last week, when you brought cocaine across the border in new Mexican-made Fords. The ones you delivered to Castro. I’ve got you on camera for that one.”
Bradley groaned.
“Part of her putting herself back together is sorting out your lies from the truth. You have no idea how much trust she wasted on you. So help her out, Bradley. Tell Erin who you are and what you’ve done. She knows the basics already.”
Bradley sat back and looked down at the plastic table. Hood saw the flush on his face. “If I do that, I’ll lose her. Then I won’t have anything.”
“Sure you will-you’ll have that little streak of decency you were born with. Grow some, Bradley. It’s time. And help me take down Mike.”
“How?”
“Owens is the key.”
38
Later Bradley sat near Erin and Thomas as they slept. He listened to the hum of Imperial Mercy Hospital and looked at his wife and son and wondered how he could feel so far from them when they were actually just a few feet away. But now that his small family was real, just when his direction should be clear, he feared that he would lose them. Maybe to Mike Finnegan. Maybe not. But lose them he would, when Erin learned the truth. He pictured a cat trying to hold on to a wet glass globe, claws scratching for a purchase that could not last.
He watched them sleep and wondered what it would be like to confess it all to her-what he had done, his history, his ill-gotten treasures, his deal with a devil. Was it really time? Grow some. Tell Erin what you’ve done. Then Erin would complete her banishment of him. And if Hood told Dez the truth of what had happened in Yucatan, the LASD would certainly fire and possibly prosecute him. He imagined prison, and what it would be like when he got out, trying to be a weekend dad, a man not with a wife and son but a man with mere visitation rights to what had once been his. He could not convincingly imagine such a life.
In the evening Bradley took the elevator down to the lobby and walked out to the parking lot. The sun had set and the eastern sky was purple and dotted with bashful young stars. He fished the pack of smokes from his sock-deputies were not allowed to carry tobacco products while in uniform-and lit it with a match. He called Owens and told her the news.
“Is he beautiful?”
“He’s very beautiful.”
“Does he look like you?”
“He doesn’t really look like either of us.”
“I am so happy for you. I am proud. You’ll be a strong and good father. And Erin will be a wonderful mother.”
“I want that.”
“I’ll tell Mike that Thomas Firth Jones is now among us. He’ll be glad to hear this.”
“We need to talk. Face to face. No Mike. It’s important, Owens.”
“He told me what you two were discussing at the convention before you made your exit. What he said about me is unflattering but true. I can be traded.”
“Can he be traded?”
She was silent for a long beat. “That’s a dangerous idea, Bradley.”
“Hear me out.”
“Name the time and place.”
39
Wampler stood on the deck of his Imperial Beach apartment, peacoat buttoned, considering the Pacific. It looked heavy and dangerous, big, frothy slabs of ocean banging against one another, all mixed up. The wind huffed and howled and two skinny kids in black wetsuits paddled around. Looking to his left, he could see Tijuana with its first lights of evening coming on. The property manager had told him that this complex was the last one south on the California coast-next stop, Mexico, just a few hundred yards away. She said the river between the two countries was filled with sewage and poison and don’t go in it. She also said the new wall and the bad economy were keeping a lot of the Mexicans out, but keep your apartment and garage locked or your stuff will get ripped off, no doubt.
Wampler stared out at TJ. He liked the idea that he could walk down the shoreline dragging his new kayak behind him, then paddle it across a tidal channel and just minutes later be in Mexico, far beyond the reach of American cops. Not a bad feature for a man who’d murdered an ATF agent and was now taking down scores of thousands of dollars selling Stinger missiles to Mexican cartels, dollars that would be sealed in plastic bags in the hold of the kayak, along with a gun or two. His emergency exit plan.
Clint took a deep breath and tasted the thick salt air. He felt a shrewd pride that he had been able to pull himself out of poverty from one of the poorest places in America and make something of himself. Mr. Clinton Stewart Wampler regarded his Pacific Ocean.
Mary Kate would have dug this, he thought. He’d kept her in mind as he rented it. Beach right here. Romantic Mexico right next door. Her own furnished and clean apartment, with a refrigerator that wasn’t loud and didn’t drip, a gas heater instead of a stinking electric plug-in, windows covered with blinds rather than plywood and aluminum foil like Skull’s flop. Sunshine three hundred days a year.
Too bad that Mary Kate was now in for a slightly modified program. He pictured her cute little face and was still pissed that Skull had messed it up for him. But even more pissed at her for sneaking around Buenavista with ATF agent Glitter Gums Charlie Hooper, all the while pretending she was back in Russell County getting ready to come be his girl. Pissed wasn’t even the word for it. Clint thought they needed a new fuckin’ word for what those two made him feel. Sweet revenge it would be. A package deal.
He got a sixer of premium beer from the stainless steel fridge and went downstairs to the garage. He used the remote to open the door and stepped inside, then closed it quickly so as not to advertise the new Ford Explorer.
It was beautiful. It was part of his reward for the last seven Stingers. Unfortunately, the cobalt blue beauty was also of interest to Charlie Hooper, according to Castro. And therefore of interest to every other law enforcement agency in America, Clint had to figure. So he had bought a cheap used Kia Something or Other-cash, private party-for his day-to-day transportation needs. Parked it on the street.
Now he used the Ford key fob to unlock the Explorer and he climbed in and pulled the door closed. God, the smell. He turned on the premium sound. The fancy subscription radio had a whole station dedicated to good, hard, head-banging death metal, which was what he liked. Israel Castro had had his guys install a subwoofer in the back and it truly throbbed. No charge. Clint broke off the first beer and set the rest on the passenger floor mat, not on the milk-white leather. He ran his hand over the seat instead and thought of MK and felt the music rattling his bones. Someday he’d get to drive this thing wherever and whenever he wanted. He checked his look in the rearview and was startled by the self-shorn and self-dyed hair, a styling disaster of divots and whorls and wrong angles and flubbed-up cuts, all shiny white. Platinum Frost. He patted the mess but it did no good. Truly, he didn’t care.
• • •
A nap and three beers later he drove the Kia out to Alpine, where he met two of Castro’s men in a casino parking lot-Clint’s choice of places, and far from Imperial Beach because Castro and his men were getting harder to trust. But the money was there and right. It was heavy and packed in two cloth shopping bags, and Wampler said not one word to the bagmen other than “hey” and “see ya.” The deal was for four more Stingers at $35,000 each. Way up I-15 north he got off at Gopher Canyon, used the darkness to break off his $44,000 and stash it on the backseat floorboard.