The Border Lords

by T. Jefferson Parker

  The evening of his second day he lit a fire against the chill and just before dusk he saw the black SUV roll to a stop in the distance and Teodoro and his two associates climb out of it. Ozburn and Daisy sat side by side on a hillock and watched them come across the desert toward them. They carried weapons and made no effort to conceal themselves. When they were a few hundred yards away Ozburn saw the three men in the hooded sweatshirts walking across the moraine toward them. Ozburn watched the Mexicans slow down their steady march and the hooded men approach. Teodoro and his narcos stopped uncertainly but the men continued toward them. When they were a hundred feet apart Ozburn heard the distant boom of Teodoro’s voice and the softer reply of the tall man in the middle. The conversation lasted a full minute but Ozburn couldn’t make out the words. Then the gunmen unleashed a fusillade of fire. Ozburn saw the bullets lifting little wisps of rock dust all around him like raindrops and then he heard the reports. A bullet whined overhead in ricochet, trailing off with diminishing volume. Daisy stood and wagged her tail. Ten seconds later the shooting was over and the hooded men had not moved and the Mexican men were running back toward their vehicle with all the speed they could muster. Ozburn saw Teodoro look back and fall down and when Ozburn looked again at the three hooded strangers, they had disappeared, but Teodoro was up and running just the same. Then Ozburn was lying on his back near the spring, his mind blank, his body sweating and his heart pounding as if from a dream he couldn’t remember.

  Early on Monday Ozburn drove the Mercury into the Mexican side of Buenavista and took a room at the Gran Sueño Hotel. Mateo called him on the room phone just after three o’clock and told him where he was to go. Ozburn knew that part of L.A. County so he didn’t have to marshal his trembling hands to write down the address.

  —I hope you are rested and feeling well, pendejo. You will have to leave Buenavista soon or you will have no deal.

  —I’ll be there on time, old man.

  Mateo gave him a number to call for last-minute instructions. Ozburn shaved, then showered with the duffel propped against the outside of the shower door. Daisy lay on the thin floor rug and licked the water off his ankles when he got out. Ozburn swallowed a handful of vitamins and fed the dog and changed into clean clothes and looked at himself in the mirror. His face was green and his pupils were just dots in the iris. He slipped his sunglasses on and carried his duffel into the clean light of the border afternoon.

  Ten minutes later he was speeding east on Interstate 8 in Father Joe Leftwich’s beater Mercury. Daisy sat upright in the passenger seat and looked out the window.

  34

  Bradley Jones walked briskly across the barnyard toward his Cayenne. Mateo had just called and Gravas was on his way north. The afternoon was warm and the huge oak tree was filled with doves that whimpered and flitted and cooed. Jones wore cowboy boots and old dungarees and an oversize Nat Nast shirt. He sported a brown Stetson that Erin had given him on his eighteenth birthday and a matching suede vest he’d stolen from a saddlery in Calabasas the very next day. Tonight she was playing the Halloween party at the Troubadour, sold out of course. The nightclub was a small venue with a history of great music, and she’d driven up earlier in the day for an interview and photo shoot with the Los Angeles Times.

  He set his holstered Glock .40-caliber on the seat next to him, then drove down the long compound driveway toward the road. His dogs bounded along with him, twelve in all. Bradley looked out the side window and smiled. The dogs might eat him out of house and home but watching them run alongside his vehicles was worth it. He reached up and pressed the controller button. Erin had strung the gate with cardboard witches that flew along as the gate rolled open. Bradley barreled through with a nod to Call, as the dogs skidded and eddied and howled at this, the received boundary of their world. In the rearview he saw the gate slide shut and Divot, the small Jack Russell terrier, leaping straight up and down and barking with the utter abandon of being abandoned.

  Bradley drove through the hills of Valley Center, enjoying as always the native oaks and the riotous bougainvillea and the liquidambars and sycamores and flame trees all blushing with reds and oranges and yellows. He followed Interstate 15 north of L.A. and into the desert toward Lancaster. This was unincorporated L.A. County desert, Bradley knew, patrolled by his brethren LASD out of the Lancaster substation, formerly Charlie Hood’s turf.

  Bradley thought about Hood and the strange convolutions of will and circumstance that had brought together his mother and Hood and himself. He remembered clearly the day that Hood had walked into their lives. Bradley was sixteen and had disliked him on sight. He had disliked the way his mother looked at the detective and the small change of inflection in her voice. He had disliked Hood’s clean-cut good looks, the odd combination of hope and skepticism on his face, his unhurried eyes. He had disliked Hood’s pride in being LASD and his questioning of his mother. True, Hood had encouraged Bradley to consider law enforcement one day, and told Bradley that LASD pay was “fair” and it was a good place to work. Bradley had bragged about being good with a handgun, which he now remembered had brought a look of concern to Charlie Hood’s annoying, freshly shaven face. The only thing that Bradley had liked about Hood was his IROC Camaro, beautifully maintained. But Suzanne had liked the whole package, or fallen for it, or fallen for her version of what he was. Back then Bradley had believed that Hood was her cause of death, and he still believed it now. For this he could not forgive him. He could respect him. He could admire him. He could even see something of what his mother had seen in him—decency, strength, humility. He could befriend him. He could use him. But not forgive.

  Bradley continued west now on Highway 138. Mateo had given him an address and a time and Bradley had called Commander Dez immediately. Dez would have her undercover team in place and some cruiser teams ready for backup and a helo in the air but out of sight and earshot. Gravas and Herredia’s low-level couriers, whom Bradley had told Dez were in the employ of the Gulf Cartel, wouldn’t have a chance.

  For the deal, El Tigre had chosen a busy avenue in a newly developed part of Lancaster. Bradley was familiar enough with it—a shopping center anchored by a Ralph’s and a Target, ringed by every fast-food franchise in the West and the usual corporate suspects: Blockbuster, CVS, Verizon, Baskin-Robbins, Hallmark Gifts, Super-cuts, Mobil Gas and Wash, and a huge parking lot shared by all of the stores. It was a busy place, Bradley knew. Hide in plain sight, he thought: Ninety neat little machine pistols and seventy-five grand in cash wouldn’t be noticed in the consumer chaos. The Mobil Gas and Wash was ground zero, in the back, where the condensed air and radiator water were dispensed.

  By his own design Bradley himself would not participate in the bust. Too much suspicion would come his way. He told nobody of the intel he gave to Dez that Sunday and he was confident that Dez had kept his name far removed from her operation. But naturally he couldn’t resist watching it all go down, thus this voyeur’s journey to the desert to watch crazy Sean Gravas and Herredia’s lambs be sacrificed to the beautiful and courageous Commander Miranda Dez. She had called him into her office just yesterday to ask about his life, his job, his wife—and to thank him again for bringing the Gravas bust to her. She couldn’t wait to take down the Flying-Fabio-Hell’s Angel-Jesus Wannabe. At the bust of Gravas and the Gulf men, she would have an undercover deputy get video and stills for the department and of course the media. One of her sergeants had been in touch with Theresa Brewer at FOX, and Dez had thanked Bradley for that contact, too.

  The magic hour was to be eight o’clock, and by then Bradley was sitting in his Cayenne in the parking lot, right up close to the Mobil Gas and Wash. He had a good view of the rear part of the station, where the deal was set to go down. He also had a good view of the fourteen pumps, the mini-mart and the drive-through wash. Even at eight P.M. the station was busy, though the wash was being only lightly used. A van disgorged a band of vampires and goblins and a tiny Darth Vader who were led toward the restrooms by a
woman while a man swiped his card at the pump. The shopping center and the parking lot were all overrun with customers, Antelope Valley having no antelopes and far more people than services.

  He could see Miranda Dez, dressed in jeans and athletic shoes and a black thigh-length leather jacket, leaning against her red Corvette while the gas pumped in, a wireless headset on her ear, her head tilted to one side as if in casual conversation. He saw two scruffy undercover deputies posing as customers in the mini-mart, an older pickup truck with two more UCs getting gas from pump eleven, a Ford 500 freshly out of the wash with two more plainclothes deputies—a man and an attractive woman—wiping it down. Bradley watched a uniformed gas station attendant slip an OUT OF ORDER cover over the car wash control panel, then stand in the middle of the wash entrance with his arms crossed, as if daring anyone to defy the sign. Strange, Bradley thought. Unless . . .

  A silver Mercury sedan bounced into the station and Bradley caught a glimpse of Sean Gravas’s blond mane and pale face and the dark insect lenses of his sunglasses. Gravas proceeded across the station as if headed to an empty pump but he drove past the pumps and back onto the avenue and Bradley watched the Mercury join the traffic. Darth and company were marched from the mini-mart back toward the van. Then Gravas was back, entering where he’d exited this time, and crossing the lot again before driving back to where the air and water were dispensed.

  A moment later came the vehicle that Mateo had told him to watch for, a white, late-model Denali XL, the four men inside just barely visible behind the smoked windows. Bradley noted the California plates and the BAJA JOE’S decal on the back bumper, just over the trailer hitch. Just as Gravas had done, the Denali crossed the station and exited on the boulevard, only to reappear a few minutes later.

  But instead of heading for the darkened back portion of the lot where Gravas now waited, the Denali proceeded to the car-wash entry, where the attendant stepped aside and waved it into the wash. Suddenly the Mercury reversed in a nifty highway-patrol turn and shot forward to the car-wash entry and followed the Denali inside.

  Not bad, thought Bradley—a little cave of privacy in the middle of this public place. They could transfer the guns and weigh out the money in less than five minutes, while the “attendant” kept any innocent bystanders from joining the party.

  He saw Dez get into her Corvette and pull toward the car-wash entry. The attendant waved his arms and shook his head and Dez began arguing with him. She got out and left her lights aimed into the car-wash tunnel and she must have called in the cavalry, too, because as Bradley watched, the two undercover deputies in the mini-mart and the couple polishing up their 500 and the two more UC men gassing the pickup truck all drew their weapons and broke for the car wash.

  Bradley felt an incredible surge of adrenaline hit him. There’s nothing like this feeling, he thought, and no worse torture than having to sit here and just watch.

  Dez waited for the first two deputies to reach her and together they charged into the wash, guns up. Bradley heard one of them yelling at Gravas to Get down, get down, this is L.A. County Sheriffs and you are under arrest! Two more plainclothes charged into the entrance, one brandishing a gun in one hand and a video recorder in the other. The last two ran around to cover the exit. A dog began barking inside.

  Everyone down! Everyone DOWN!

  The first four gunshots rang from inside the tunnel in amplified roars. A woman screamed but another volley of gunfire drowned her out. Curses in Spanish, a man screaming with pain. Then the strange rapid sound of metal being pierced but no sound of gunfire and Bradley knew that Gravas had unleashed a silenced Love 32. Bullets whined and shrieked in ricochet, some of them finding the exits and howling off into the night. One of the plainclothes men staggered out of the entrance and collapsed. The car-wash attendant ran across the avenue. The dog barked faster.

  Gravas, down!

  Then another long, pounding volley of handgun fire, each blast echoing sharply in the tunnel, and Bradley Jones could control himself no longer.

  He ran toward the car-wash exit. He had just rounded the building when the Denali headlights came on and the big vehicle jumped toward him and Bradley saw Gravas and his dog bearing down on him. Bradley raised his gun but even then he saw he was too late. Gravas reached through the driver’s side window with a big tattooed arm and a gleaming machine pistol and sent a silent burst of fire into Bradley’s chest. The fusillade knocked him over to the slick concrete and the Denali would have crushed him if Bradley hadn’t rolled over and out of the way, the tires squealing past his ear. By the time he got up and into shooting position the Denali was well into the boulevard traffic and there was no shot he could safely take. He dropped his gun and curled into himself and felt the wild pain in his torso and ran his hands across his chest. But nothing liquid, nothing warm. Deputies ran past him for the avenue and he looked up to see Dez’s red Corvette scream off in pursuit.

  Finally he rose to his knees and looked down at his shirt. No blood. He felt through the tattered Nat Nast shirt and looked at his fingers and there was no blood on them, either.

  He picked up his gun and stood and stepped into the car wash. In the semidarkness he could see the big rubber roof brushes tucked up against the ceiling and the side brushes waiting on their assemblies and the six bodies heaped on the slick concrete floor like old rags. Herredia’s couriers, he saw, and two of the undercover deputies—the man and woman who had been detailing their beloved Ford. One of the couriers groaned and Bradley walked over to him on wobbly legs. The man stared up at him while his hand walked a few inches across the wet car-wash floor in search of his weapon.

  “We’re fools,” said Bradley, kicking away the gun.

  He staggered outside and leaned against the wall and watched as three LASD radio cars flew into the gas station from three different entrances, followed by the paramedics and two more plainwraps. Traffic was heavy and stalled with spectators, most of them out of their cars with their cell cameras pointed toward the wash. The helo hovered overhead. He stuck his gun in his waistband and walked not slowly and not quickly to his car and got into it and drove away in the opposite direction that Gravas had gone.

  He made West Hollywood in less than an hour. On a darkened side street near the Troubadour he stepped from the Cayenne and stripped off his suede vest and shirt, then painfully wriggled out of a heavy steel mesh vest concealed beneath his shirt. The vest had been a wedding gift. The accompanying card was signed, “Your Mother.” Bradley had found the joke infuriating but intriguing, given that she was a year dead on his wedding day. According to the jokester, the vest had been custom-forged by a Bakersfield blacksmith of French descent for Joaquin Murrieta, his great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, in 1851.

  He opened the hatchback and heaved the vest in. In the vehicle’s interior light he could see the buttons that ran down one side of the vest—silver 1851 eight-reales coins, drilled on-center and attached to the mail with leather ties. And he could see the old marks and dings and dimples that the vest and someone—El Famoso?—had endured. Bradley looked at the newer dings and divots that had just been added by Sean Gravas and his Love 32. These had a different patina—smoother, cleaner and deeper than those that his great ancestor had survived—and Bradley knew that his luck was holding, that if he’d been shot with a high-caliber handgun or a magnum load, he would be lying back in that car wash with the rest of the luckless dead.

  He lifted his undershirt and looked down at his chest. The welts were raised and red with white tops and painful as burns but the skin was unbroken. It looked like he’d been stung by hornets. He got back into the bullet-shredded shirt, then found the old denim jacket he always carried in his vehicle and bundled up against the sudden cold.

  He walked around the block, stopped at a liquor store and bought a pack of smokes and a bouquet of flowers. He stood outside the Troubadour and lit up and waited for his body to stop trembling and his breathing to slow. It took a while. When he wa
s ready he stepped inside, where the doorman recognized him and gave him a brief nod of acceptance.

  35

  Ozburn dropped the last of the nine wooden gun boxes into the trunk of the Corolla, then set his duffel over them, grabbed both Love 32s and closed the lid.

  He got into the passenger seat and set the guns on the floor and Daisy licked the back of his neck as he cinched up the restraints. Father Joe signaled and looked over his shoulder before slowly pulling onto Floral Street.

  “Pick up the pace a little, Padre,” said Ozburn. “You don’t want to get pulled over for going too slow.”

  Leftwich smiled and goosed the accelerator and the little four-cylinder hummed obligingly.

  “I take it there was a problem,” said the priest. He was dressed in his clerical uniform again—black shirt with a stiff white collar, black pants.

  “Five men and a woman down and probably dead. I think I killed three of the men and maybe a fourth on the way out. There were so many people and so much shooting, I could hardly tell what was going on.”

  “But there was no killing in the plan, was there?” Leftwich handed Ozburn his ancient flask and Ozburn took a big drink.

  “Just a straight-up, money-for-guns buy. I don’t know what happened. Four of Herredia’s errand boys had the guns. The others screamed they were deputies but by then they were shooting at me. Anybody can yell cop. Gulf Cartel gunmen came to mind. But two were women so I’m thinking LASD. Seven in all. Fuckin’ chaos, Father. When I saw them coming at me from both ends of that tunnel I just did what I had to do. Thanks for being here.”