The Renegades

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.

“Then I’ll do my job and be going,” said Draper.

“Yes, yes,” said Avalos. He was an impatient man, who thought that saying things twice, quickly, saved time.

Draper took his briefcase over and set it on the bar. He brought out the digital scale and set it on the bar top and tapped the ON and RESET buttons. Then he brought over the suitcases two at a time and unzipped them and lifted the stacks of bills and went to the other side of the bar. He worked off the thick rubber bands and began weighing them.

Camilla sat on a stool and watched. She was drinking through a straw from a large red plastic tumbler like Hector’s and Draper could smell the bourbon wafting out from it. She always wore a different cocktail dress and tonight’s involved claret velvet and black lace. Her perfume was sensual and strong. There was a small CD player on the bar and Camilla put on some corridos -tales of brave and handsome traffickers and the dull-witted police who can never catch them. She hummed along.

Draper ignored her. He knew she hated being ignored and he truly enjoyed this part of his job. He whistled quietly to himself while he worked and marveled at the simple math that could only have been created by a loving God:

A pound of fives contained 480 bills worth $2,400.

A pound of twenties contained 480 bills worth $9,600.

A pound of hundreds contained 480 bills worth $48,000.

He weighed each bundle twice but the scale was fast and accurate. A few minutes later, stacked up on the bar and waiting to be photographed, were two pounds of hundreds, six pounds of fifties, twenty pounds of twenties and five pounds of fives.

Draper didn’t need a calculator to know that he was looking at $444,000, the best week he had ever had. His four points would be $17,760 and it would be in his pocket just a few hours from now. He missed Terry, but what a blessing, not to have to share it. He flipped on the vacuum packer to let it warm up.

Camilla gave him a frankly craven smile and Draper smiled back.

“Camilla,” he said. “This reminds me of the time I went to church and the preacher said that God and Jesus want us in heaven with them. They want us there. And they always get what they want because they’re God and Jesus, right? I remember thinking: this world is a place of beauty and forgiveness. It made me deeply happy to be alive. Deeply. I feel that way now.”

“You’re all screwed up, Coleman,” she said. “This is not what Jesus is about.”

“You both shut up,” said Hector. “What did you get, Draper, what did you get?”

“Four-forty-four.”

“Then you make sure it gets to El Dorado, or you get to eat your own cojones for dinner tonight. Okay?”

“Yes, Hector, I’ve been very clear on that from the beginning. You’re always eager to feed me my own balls.”

Draper got a small camera from his briefcase and photographed the slabs of cash. He checked the vacuum packer to make sure it was loaded with the continuous-roll bags. Then he went to work. The machine was called the GameSaver Turbo. It could seal fifty bundles without overheating. Draper loved the machine, the efficiency of it, the eagerness with which it packaged his bills.

When he was done he packed them into the four suitcases and threw in the cheap thrift-store rags to realistically fill out the luggage.

“You tell Carlos business is good,” said Camilla.

“I won’t have to.”

“Do his women still entertain you?”

“They’re good women.”

“They’re whores.”

Hector and Camilla and Rocky helped him get the luggage down to the Cayenne.

“You always have different cars,” Hector said.

“I borrow them from friends. I vary them because Customs officials remember cars and plates, but not faces.” And it helped that he could always pluck well-maintained specimens from his Prestige customers, fudging the odometer numbers, no harm done.

“I didn’t know an honest policeman made so much money,” said Avalos with a smile. “Drive safely. Click it or ticket.”

“Yes,” said Draper.

Hector handed his empty red tumbler to Rocky. “Refill, man. Pronto, pronto.”

Herredia was most pleased by his thirty-three-pound haul of U.S. cash. He sat behind his big steel desk at El Dorado and sipped a very dark tequila. The suitcases were flat on the floor and the vacuum-packed bundles were stacked neatly by the scale on the desk.

Herredia looked at Draper and his thick eyebrows lifted up and away from each other and he looked soulful. “To this crazy life, Coleman.”

“Yes,” said Draper, holding up an invisible shot glass.

The old man, Felipe, sat where he always did, but he had propped his shotgun against the wall behind him rather than holding it on his lap, a gesture that suggested trust.

“I was very surprised to hear about Terry,” said Herredia.

“So was I. I still can’t believe it.”

“A black American gangster?”

“That’s what a witness saw.”

Draper felt the weight of Herredia’s attention.

“I’m sad,” said Herredia. “I admired him. But I believe he was becoming dangerous. You know this.”

Draper nodded and looked down at his hands.

“But, twice as much for you,” said Herredia.

“Yes.”

“You are not pleased?” asked Herredia.

“Twice as much pleases me.”

“But you do not drink. You do not talk to me.”

“The drive was long tonight.”

“You have your bed and your whore.”

“I have a real woman in my life,” said Draper.

Herredia looked puzzled, but he nodded as if he understood.

“And I’m going to drive home tonight,” said Draper. “I mean no disrespect, Carlos.”

Draper guessed that Herredia was taking in well over two million a month now. Draper knew that the Eme faction led by Avalos was the primary collector of Herredia’s money, taking it from the hundreds of street gangsters who sold product, and paid obeisance and taxes. But Herredia had other arrangements, too. The drug world was filled with secret allegiances-some very old and others very new, such as Draper’s and Laws’s sudden and dramatic entrance as Herredia’s new couriers. It was a world in flux. Loyalties shifted. Allies became enemies. Friends became dead. The cartels were as complicated as the Vatican.

And Draper had always believed that disorder was opportunity.

“Con permiso,” he said, rising slowly and taking two steps toward Herredia’s desk. He folded his hands in front of him and looked first into Herredia’s now glowering face, then to the flagstones on the floor.

“Sir, I think-”

“You think I’m going to force you to take another partner.”

“That is another-”

“Silence, gringo. And listen to the sound of my good news. You have my trust and respect. You have your gun and your badge if you need them. In two years you have never been late or short. You have never given me reason to worry. So I say this to you: you will continue to work for me, alone, as you wish.”

Draper bowed. “Your trust means very much to me. But-”

“And you will take five points, not four, on all of what you deliver.”

Draper was truly flabbergasted, so it wasn’t hard to portray it. “It’s hard to speak.”

“This is probably because I am interrupting you. Tell me now, Coleman, what you are trying to say.”

“Avalos is cheating you.”

Draper heard the old man shift behind him, the soft clink of the shotgun leaving the wall.

“I have trouble hearing sometimes,” said Herredia.

“Avalos is cheating you.”

“You prove this.”

“I can’t. But Rocky can. He’s seen it. Rocky is afraid that when you find out you’ll have him killed along with Hector and Camilla. I told him I would try to keep that from happening.”

“How much does Hector cheat me?”

“Approximately two points every week. Camilla takes it before the bills are stacked and pressed and weighed. A few hundred here, a few hundred there, from many different people. Rocky said she’s proud of her defiance. She doesn’t bother to hide her thievery. But Hector never sees her do it, so he can tell himself there is nothing to see. So he can tell us all there is nothing to see.”

The old blackness had come back to Herredia’s eyes. It was like shades being drawn on a window for the enactment of secrets inside.

A moment later Herredia rattled off a series of commands in Mexican Spanish bristling with obscenities. Draper had trouble making out the rapid phrases that involved a series of names he had never heard.

The old man listened, his face dark and wrinkled as a peach pit, his hair long and white, then he vanished.

“You will spend the night here and we will talk, Coleman. Tonight I want to talk.”

Draper was surprised to see the sadness in Herredia’s eyes.

In the black of early morning, Draper idled at the United States Customs booth in San Ysidro. He offered his badge holder and Sheriff’s Department ID and answered the usual questions: two days, friends at La Fonda, purchases of two bottles of Santo Tomas table wine and a silver bracelet inlaid with turquoise. These items, supplied by one of Herredia’s jolly cooks, sat in pasteboard boxes on the seat beside him. His fishing gear was piled in the back. His dollars were vacuum-wrapped and fitted into a bumper cavity.

“How many times a year do you cross this border?” asked the official.

“Six or eight,” said Draper. “I’ve never counted.”

“What do you do?”

“I fish.”

“For what?”

“Snapper. Bass. Jack. Tuna, if I’m lucky.”

The Customs man peered into the back. Draper saw the second Customs official appear at the passenger-side window and he rolled it down.

The inspector swung open a rear door and pulled one of the boxes across the seat and rummaged through it. He slammed the door and went around to the back of the vehicle and Draper popped the hatchback for him. In the rearview Draper watched the man paw through his fishing gear.

“Slow night?” he called back.

No answer. He knew these idiots wouldn’t find anything; even the dogs of secondary inspection would have a tough time with the vacuum-packed bills.

Then the hatchback slammed and the man to his left waved him through.

“Proceed, Deputy Draper.”

He drove the speed limit north on Interstate 5, but his mind was filled with Herredia’s proposal, its details and possibilities, its potential consequences.

When he hit Solana Beach he called Alexia. She answered on the first ring.

“I’ve been called,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”

He heard the breath catch in her throat. Then she whispered, “Coleman, I love you.”

“I’ll come back to you and Brittany, alive and soon. You have my solemn promise.”

“I will pray and wait. And when you come back I will be alive again.”

“I’ll be alive again, too, Alexia.”

He clicked off and dialed Juliet in Laguna. He got her machine, said her name and waited.

“Coleman?”

“I’m home.”

“I don’t know why I do this.”

“Yes, you do. I’ll be there in less than an hour.”

She didn’t bother to get out of bed. He showered in the darkness and slipped in beside her. She pretended to be asleep, then vaguely receptive, then she greedily took Draper and fled to that place he couldn’t see or name, a place all hers, located somewhere behind or beyond her tightly closed eyes.