7
“So we pull up to the U.S. Customs booth in TJ. It’s the Friday after we arrested Eichrodt. Laws and I look out the window to where U.S. soil ends and the concept of guilty until proven innocent begins. We’re making the leap. We’ve got 347 grand packed into two suitcases in the trunk and Laws is scared shitless. I tell him to relax, exhale dude, we’re going to be okay.
“Homeland Security stops us, little black guy, looks like Sammy Davis, Jr. He looks at our LASD ID cards and our badges, wants to know why we’re going to Mexico and I tell him to fish in Baja. A two-day trip, I say. He looks at our beat-up faces, wants to know where we’re staying, and I tell them the Rosarito Beach Hotel. We’ve got three clear plastic tubs of fishing gear in the backseat, and six short, thick big-game rods in the storage space the Beemer has for golf clubs or skis. One of the tubs has some very expensive new saltwater reels. Sammy pokes at it and moves it around but he doesn’t open it. Then he wishes us good luck.
“Next, the Mexicans ask us the same lame questions. I answer them in Spanish. There are three young Federales leaning against the booth, guys not much older than you, and they stare through us like we’re not there-”
“Did you badge them, too?”
“One hundred percent not, my man. Cops mean guns and nothing terrifies Mexican officials more than guns. Guns can end up in the hands of unhappy citizens, and Mexico has plenty of those. Guns are the only thing that scares Mexican officials. Illegal drugs? Hell, bring them in, move them north. Drug cash? Sure, everyone wants American dollars. But guns in Mexico are another story.
“They wave us through. TJ’s a pit but I love that toll road and all the little cities on the coast-Rosarito, Puerto Nuevo, Cantamar, El Descanso, La Fonda, Bajamar. Burning trash and tires, smells like heaven to me. At El Sauzal we turn east on Highway 3. Three miles from the turnoff we spot the dirt road with the pipe-rail gate across it. It’s exactly where Herredia’s L.A. lieutenant told us it would be-”
“Hector Avalos.”
“Don’t interrupt. So we both get out of the car and stand in the hot dust and wait. A few minutes later I hear a vehicle up the road. Two men materialize from the darkness. They simply appear. They’re in camo fatigues and they’ve got machine guns. They unlock and open the gate and signal us through. Once on the other side I see an armored Humvee like the ones in Iraq, and we follow it-five miles of washboard trying to jar our fillings out of our teeth, and ruts that must lead all the way to the gates of hell. I don’t know how the M5 handled it, but it did.
– I don’t like this, says Terry.
– Keep your cool and a hand on your gun, I tell him.
– This was all supposed to go smoothly.
– For Mexico this is smoothly.
“Two men on the road direct us, waving like an airport crew to get the M5 across a wooden bridge, down a steep sandy hill, then back up to a wide turnout where the road ends. Past the turnout is a ten-foot-high concrete-block wall. There’s rebar poking up through the top and a gun tower behind it.
– Amazing, says Laws, the fucking criminals have protection like this.
– I think you’ll be more impressed later, I tell him.
– If they don’t kill us.
– They won’t kill us, I say. We’re American cops. Herredia will recognize a good deal when he sees one.
“In the dash lights I see Terry’s face, still puffy and bruised from the arrest scuffle with Shay Eichrodt. He looks deeply uneasy. Then the wall itself opens. A whole section of it swings open to let us through. Laws cranes his neck around for a look at it as we drive in.
– It just opens, like a magic castle or something, Terry says. Like in a movie.
“Then four more machine-gunners appear on the road, one with his hand up, and suddenly this blinding beam of white light scorches into my car. I hear rapping on my window and get out. I tell Terry to get out. I’m half-blinded by the tower light and I feel hands on me, down and up, front and back, son of a bitch is muttering in Spanish to his friends but I can’t quite hear him. My ribs are killing me from Eichrodt but I won’t flinch, it’s a matter of honor. The guy takes the nine from my hip holster and the thirty-eight derringer from my boot. He takes the twenty-two-caliber eight-shot Smith from the pocket of my Abboud blazer, and the thumb-action folding knife from the pocket of my jeans. He takes my goddamned car keys.
“They pop the trunk and scuttle up to it with their weapons aimed into it, like they expect something to escape. Terry’s standing staunch against the pat-down while they strip his weapons away. I start whistling because it helps me think. I understand one thing at this point: we are absolutely at the mercy of Herredia now. There is no accountability here; all it will take is a mere nod and Terry and I will be tortured and executed and never found. Ever. But I’ve seen these kind of people and this kind of lawless power before in Jacumba, when I was a boy, and I find it comforting. I can’t say why. I understand it. It’s simple, physical, predictable. I remind myself that there’s life and there’s death and you must choose life at all cost.
“Then we’re back in the Beemer, following the Humvee down a much better dirt road; it’s graded and graveled, with the lights of what must be Herredia’s compound way back in the hills. I see an irrigated pasture with cattle, what looks like a driving range, and an airstrip. How’s your beer, son?”
“I’m ready for another.”
I get the woman’s attention and she comes over and we order two more drinks. I call an excellent sushi bar down the boulevard and order a large plate of sashimi delivered. The traffic down on Sunset is getting heavier now, more of the republic cruising for sex, drugs and rock and roll. I light my cigar again, roll it in the heavy butane flame and draw the smoke into my mouth, send some down into my lungs, then exhale a blue-gray cloud into the L.A. night.
I see the boy studying me. I pass him the lighter and he proceeds with the same ritual. When he starts to say something I cut him off.
“The wall around Herredia’s compound was eight feet high, stone and concrete. I drive through a varnished wooden gate, still following the Humvee. Two more machine guns wait inside. I see the words El Dorado built onto the gate in wrought iron, the letters raised and connected like the letters of a cattle brand. I remember reading the poem as a kid.
“The home is a plaster-and-beam Spanish-style hacienda, hunkered low and flat beneath a canopy of palms. I see a bunch of smaller outbuildings up on the hillside to the west. Near the east side of the house there’s a grove of thatched palapas that glow, lit from below. Pale blue reflections of water move on the undersides of the roofs. And I think: swimming pool and hacienda and driving range and airstrip and a hundred head of cattle and a small army-Herredia is doing all right in his rustic little office here in Baja.
“Then the Hummer driver points to a parking place outlined by jagged desert boulders. I park and we get out and face another goddamned gunman, this one an old man dressed in peasant clothes, with a head of wild white hair and a black eye patch. He’s got a combat-shortened automatic shotgun on a strap over one shoulder and it’s pointed at me. I lean into my car and pull out the plastic tub of new saltwater fishing reels. I tell him that we have brought gifts for Mister Herredia. He looks across at Laws, standing on the other side of the car, and tells him to get the luggage from the trunk. Terry does what he’s told. Then the old man jabs the gun toward the outbuildings and I lead the way up a gravel path. At each of the first two buildings the old man barks Andale and I don’t break stride. I note the moon in the northwest now and I can smell the pasture and the cattle. The third building we come to is squat and square, with faint light coming through bright blankets hung over the windows. The door is cracked open. I look back at the old man and he motions me forward. I crunch up the path, nudge the door open with my foot and step inside. Pavers on the floor. Bare white walls. A black chandelier. The smell of cigars. A big iron desk, looks like something salvaged from a shipyard or railroad scrap, set on caissons made of tree trunks. I hear Terry and the old man come in behind me.”