Bradley looked at him, then shrugged and squeezed the lime into his beer. “When Kick stops kicking, you’ll know.”
“Don’t do it. I understand why you want to, but don’t.”
“You cannot and do not understand.”
“I loved her, too.”
“You didn’t even deserve to touch her.”
“Maybe that’s true but if you kill Kick it’s going to change you and everything about your life.”
“Exactly.”
After the song the Cheater Slicks took a break and Erin came over. Bradley gave her his stool, then walked back to his table without a word to her or Hood.
“He’s chipper tonight,” she said.
“You sound terrific. I love that walk on water song.”
“Thanks. I quit smoking. Kinda worried it would wreck my voice but so far so good.”
“You okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Hood nodded toward Bradley.
“He hasn’t said a word about Kick lately. That worries me. Usually, you know, he’s always mumbling something or other about what he has to do.”
“Has to do.”
“Yeah, has to. I’m surprised he’s contained it as well as he has.”
“The college thing was all bullshit.”
“I told him he wouldn’t fool you. He’s looking over here. He’s got the look. I should go.”
Hood listened to the whole next set. Bradley didn’t look his way again. Two beautifully dressed women joined Bradley and his friends at their table.
Hood drove L.A. for a couple of hours, then home to Silver Lake. It was almost two a.m. His apartment was cold. He didn’t sleep well but he looked forward to the drive back up to Lancaster the next day for eight more hours of patrol through Antelope Valley.
11
The first Friday night after the death of Terry Laws, Draper went alone to collect Herredia’s money. He felt conspicuous and friendless and reminded himself not to let it show. He also reminded himself that without Terry, he would now be taking home twice the pay.
As he drove through Cudahy, Draper wondered again if Terry had told Laurel what they had done, and what they were doing. Or maybe some part of it. Terry had always denied having said anything to his wife, but this question was an itch that Draper couldn’t scratch. It angered him that he couldn’t put it to rest, deal with it effectively like he dealt with everything else. But now, heading into the dark labyrinth of Hector Avalos, he felt even more anxious. Certainly Laurel had talked to Hood by now. And yet, Hood hadn’t come back to him with more questions about Terry-so maybe Laurel had no idea what her husband was doing.
It was okay.
It was going to be okay.
Draper was dressed in street clothes and beside him on the seat of the Cayenne was his leather briefcase.
As usual, Hector Avalos’s gunmen watched him drive down the Cudahy side street. As usual, more pistoleros stoically escorted his car down the alley and through a vehicle port and into the warehouse. When he was inside, they watched him get out of the car before leaving him alone to navigate the maze of darkened rooms and hallways that formed the south end of the big building.
At the final door, in what had become a Friday night ritual, Draper knocked fists with Rocky, Hector’s number two man and his most trusted bodyguard. They talked for a minute in the Spanglish they were both comfortable with. Rocky was a small knot of muscle with a web of tattoos that started on the back of his head and spread across his back and shoulders and down his arms. Rocky knew some of the ’manos that Draper had grown up with in Jacumba, clever desert drug runners who could evade law enforcement by using the vast network of dirt roads and caves and tunnels and hidden bridges that surrounded Jacumba on both sides of the border. They talked a moment about what had happened to Terry Laws. A look passed between them that was hard and silent and mutual, then they knocked fists again. Draper rapped sharply three times on the door, waited a beat, then knocked two more.
“I hear the secret knock,” he heard Avalos holler. “Enter. Enter!”
Draper pushed through the heavy metal door and into Avalos’s dogfighting arena.
It was a big room with high ceilings and exposed girders and beams. Now it was only partially lit. Built onto one wall was an elevated “luxury” box with sliding glass doors through which to view the action. Draper could see Hector sitting inside where he always sat, watching TV. Camilla, his wife, sat next to him. Light from the TV played off the glass in arrhythmic flashes.
Draper waved and headed toward the stairs that led up to the box. He could smell the spilled alcohol and the bleach used to clean the floor of the pit when the fights were over.
Draper entered the box, shook Hector’s hand, and nodded to Camilla. The couple sat on a red leather couch that faced the fighting pit. The television was on the floor. There was a bar in the rear of the box, a refrigerator, a privacy screen and a bed. There were two recliners, also facing the pit, and half a dozen extra bar stools that could be brought up close to the sliding glass doors for unfettered viewing of the action below. Four large rolling suitcases stood along the glass, handles up and ready to go. Draper sat in a lumpy plaid rocking chair across the coffee table from Hector and Camilla and set the briefcase on the floor beside him.
Avalos was big and bald and clean shaven except for a great bushy mustache that he grew long. He looked Confucian. Beneath his eyes were five small tattooed teardrops-each one representing a murder he’d committed. He wore a crisp Pendleton. He had a cheerless face and his eyes were dark and calculating. He was drinking gin and tamarindo from a big red plastic tumbler.
Camilla was a nalgona -a big-butted woman-and strong, her long black hair curled into ringlets that bounced like tree-bound snakes. Her face was pale and her lips were black. She sat on the sofa beside her husband, one hand resting high on his thigh.
“What happened to Terry?” asked Avalos. “The newspapers don’t have nothing.”
“A Blood gunned him down.”
“While he was working, man? In his uniform and they do that?”
“That’s what happened.”
“That’s like TJ, man, like TJ.”
“It was Lancaster.”
“But you weren’t there.”
“I was off that night.”
Draper saw the implication and ignored it. Avalos was a world-class suspecter of people, borderline if not clinically paranoid.
“Terrible, man, terrible,” said Avalos. He took a long draw of the gin. When drunk, Avalos became thoughtful, then inward, then unpredictable. “I lose my friends. You lose your friend. It’s an evil business that we’re in.”
“Who are you going to share your money with now?” asked Camilla.
“How about nobody?” asked Draper.
“El Tigre will force you to have another partner,” said Avalos. “He will tell you who it will be. He can’t put his property in danger, not for you or nobody.”
“We’ll be talking about that,” said Draper. “How did we do this week?”
“Yes, yes, very good.”
As always Avalos offered him a drink, and as always Draper refused it, alluding to the task at hand. Draper took the wad from his jacket pocket and put it on the coffee table in front of Avalos. One thousand dollars-his weekly tribute, payable from the four points he earned the week before. It was this money-and Hector’s unshakable suspicion that his former couriers were cheating him-that had opened the door into the North Baja Cartel for Draper.
Camilla examined a black fingernail, then set her hand back on Hector’s thigh.
Draper looked through the sliding glass door. The fight pit stood in the center of the room. It had a concrete floor and walls made of three-quarter-inch plywood panels painted red, yellow or green. It was ringed on three sides by gymnasium bleachers. Long pairs of fluorescent lights hung by chains from the ceiling. There were no windows. Industrial floor fans, turned off now, were stacked behind the bleachers to help cool the blood-thirsty crowds that packed the room once a month.