T. Parker - The Famous and the Dead

He opened and checked them also, running his eyes and fingers over the bricks of compressed cash, the jewelry and old silver dollars, some loose gemstones waiting to be sold or set. He liked to see his loot in mild disarray and casually stored, more or less heaped, like a pirate might do. He lifted a wad of necklaces, mostly gold and pearls, then dropped them back to the safe bottom. There was even a cigar box that held the first few items he’d shoplifted, as a ten-year-old. He opened it and looked in at the baseball-card bubble-gum packs, now hardened and cracked within, the jawbreakers, pocketknives, toy cars and plastic reptiles, the tube of BB’s, and the miniature skateboards.

Pleased, Bradley locked the safes, then walked over to the long table that stood along one of the walls. There were three colorful serapes spread upon it. He carefully pulled each one away and let them drop to the floor. Then he looked down on remnants of his history: Joaquin Murrieta’s walnut-handled six-guns in old hip holsters; a bulletproof vest made for Joaquin by a French-American blacksmith in 1852; Joaquin’s journal; the leather-bound journals written by various Murrieta descendants, including his mother, during the century and a half since his death, all of them filled with lawless exploits and seductions and great bravery and generosity, and no little violence. And of course Joaquin’s severed head was there, too, still in the jar in which it was originally displayed after the shootout at Cantua Creek-the charge was one dollar to see the head of the bloodthirsty murderer and horse thief, Joaquin Murrieta!

Bradley ran his hand over the smooth leather of the holsters and the cool handles of the revolvers. He lifted his mother’s first journal, begun when she was ten years old, and read out loud her opening line for maybe the thousandth time: “Dear Children, do I have a tale of adventure for you!”

A tale of adventure was right , he thought. He pictured her and set the journal back with the others.

Now Bradley beheld the head. It was pale and roughly severed. The original preservative was brandy but this eventually had been replaced with isopropyl alcohol, then formaldehyde. It had yellowed, slightly. The face was vaguely handsome, as Joaquin had reputedly been in life, but his famous wild black hair had fallen out through the decades and now lay at the bottom of the jar. Sometimes he looked noble to Bradley, and sometimes only hapless and forlorn.

He tapped it twice and watched the head sway and the hair lift and lilt. How could you have been everything they said you were? Bradley wondered. They said you were a real man. But they also said you were only imagined. They said you were short and dark. They said you were tall, blond, and blue-eyed. They said you murdered for fun. They said you were generous and kind. They said you were loyal to Rosa. They said you seduced hundreds. They said you died young and were beheaded. They said no, it was a friend of yours who was beheaded. They said you lived and died very old with your head still on and a large family all around you. So what am I supposed to make of you, El Famoso? You’re my history, but which history? How do I discover what I am when I know so little truth? What should I do with you? This is the twenty-first century, dude, and nobody needs a head in a jar. Especially a head that may or may not be what it’s said to be. What am I going to tell Thomas about you? Mom got driven half crazy by that question-she worried for years what to say to me and my brothers. Should she tell us the truth? Tell us lies? Tell us nothing? Tell some of us some things and some of us other things? She agonized over it. Because she knew that I would fall for you. She knew I had something that she had, and that you had. Something waiting to be set free. Something wild. She died undecided. You must understand what a problem you are to me, Joaquin. Maybe I’m better off without you. Has knowing you made my life better? Well, you’ve helped me become reckless, brave, and rich. Yes. I’ve murdered several men, though I might add that they all deserved it. I’ve stolen. I’ve stolen a lot. I am steadfastly dishonest, manipulative, and self-serving. I’ve deceived and endangered the only person I love. And of all those things, the only one I regret even a little is the last-what I did to Erin. And here I am, doing it again. Hell, she doesn’t even know about this place, and all the things I’ve done. So, Joaquin, why should I keep you around? Haven’t you had enough? What does my son need with you? What good are you to me?

Bradley went to the workbench and poured a neat Scotch. He brought it back to the table and clinked the glass to Joaquin’s. “To the river that carries us all,” he said. “Run long.” Then he covered Joaquin back up.

In the morning Oscar the security guard offered a minimal smile as Hood held his ID to the door lock on the ATF hallway. Hood got coffee and went to his cubicle and began reading still another ATF Form 3310.12, used to report multiple sales of semiautomatic rifles in Southwest border states. Hundreds were generated each month. It was attached to ATF Form 4473, the Firearms Transaction Record. Dealing with such forms made him drowsy.

Bly had requisitioned them from Buster’s Last Stand and it wasn’t hard for Hood to find what he was looking for. He wondered why Yolanda Drumm, the rhinestoned AR-5 buyer, needed a new 7.62 mm assault rifle every week for the past four weeks running. And why, before the new reporting rules, she had needed two, sometimes three rifles per week. Once, four. Well, clearly, for the Sinaloans, Hood thought, or other deserving patrons. He yawned.

He wrote down Drumm’s address in El Centro, and her phone numbers, and her credit card number. If they could catch her selling to the wrong people, they could take out one small supplier, one tiny contributory to the Iron River. She probably made fifty bucks a gun, maybe a hundred. Hood’s counterparts in Mexican law enforcement called this small-time gunrunning contrabando de las hormigas- contraband of the ants-but when the many ants were added up, their trickles became a big part of the river.

From the government numbers Hood saw, he conservatively figured that the flow of guns from the United States to Mexico was between a thousand and fifteen hundred a month. What he’d seen with his own eyes-there were over six thousand federally licensed gun dealers operating along the border, roughly three per mile-put the number higher. One prominent think-tank estimate of two thousand guns per day seemed way high. But in a sense everyone was counting backwards, because the number of guns going south could only be extrapolated from the number of guns found in the south and traced back their origins. Many guns of course were never found, and many more were not traceable. So the numbers floated as numbers do, subject to interpretation and misinterpretation, often politically colored.

Regardless, Hood knew for certain that it was good luck running into Yo Yo and the Sinaloans at El Pueblo. They probably did their deals in the parking lot in back, or somewhere close and handy. Hood believed in luck. His cell phone buzzed and he liked the number he saw. He hit the digital recorder on his desk and answered.

“Hooper. It’s Dirk Sculler here.”

“The Lewis made my collector very happy.”

“I had the weirdest dream last night. And when I woke up I thought of your customers, the ones you said didn’t need small-bore playthings.”

“Edge of my seat, Dirk.”

“I dreamed of FIM-Ninety-two Stingers, straight from Raytheon, still in the crates.”

“Certain people do dream of owning those.”

“I’d like to meet just one.”