T. Parker - The Famous and the Dead

“It’s where I belong.”

“Thanks for coming tonight. It means a lot to me.”

“Remember at the wedding the absinthe bar was over that way? Remember the bulls getting drunk and stumbling into the lake and the guys on Jet Skis trying to round them up? And the dancing and the brawl? Now, that was a wedding party.”

“I was hungover for a week.”

Hood saw that the barn door was slid all the way open and a strong light came from inside. He thought he saw a Ping-Pong table in there, then wondered if his eyes were deceiving him because the table seemed to be somehow suspended in midair. He blinked and refocused, but the table remained levitated.

Bradley got Reyes to help him set champagne flutes along the deck railing, then disappeared into the house. A moment later he came back with a magnum of champagne cradled in a towel and sent the cork zooming into the darkness. Some of the dogs broke off in chase of it, nipping at one another for advantage. Bradley motioned everyone to join him and began filling the flutes. “Look how responsible we’ve all become,” he said. “Just a few years ago we celebrated our wedding with two days of food and booze and bull riding. Now, we toast our son with Dom Perignon. To Thomas Firth Jones! And to you, who helped bring him into this world. We thank you. We thank you!”

They drank. Then Bradley handed off the bottle to Reyes and led them back down the steps and, taking command of the stroller, walked them across the barnyard and past the big oak. The dogs followed with their usual sense of purpose. Hood saw the outline of the hills against the deepening dark and a white cuticle of moon already high in the late winter sky. There was a John Deere with a lowered front loader parked near the barn. Bradley stopped at the entrance and lifted Thomas from the stroller. “Charlie, can you hang on to him for a few minutes? Erin, will you take my hand? I won’t bite. I have some things to show you all.”

Hood gave Beth his champagne glass, then took the blanket-wrapped Thomas. He was very light and the blanket was warm with him. He wore the blue hospital cap and tiny blue mittens against the chill. Erin fussed with his cap for a moment and told Hood not to drop him, then they followed Bradley into the barn.

Inside the smells were of gasoline and vehicles and tools, not horses or livestock or poultry. Hood saw that what he had thought was a levitating Ping-Pong table was just that-held straight up off the concrete floor by two very large hydraulic lifts. He saw the MX bikes and the quad runners lined up against one wall, and the gas and oil cans and the tires stacked nearby. There was a Bobcat and two power mowers and a chipper and several generators.

Before they came to the Ping-Pong table, Bradley stopped and looked down. “Right here, you see this? This is where two of my friends were hacked to death five years ago. They were brothers and they lived next door. I found them. Mom thought it traumatized me but I said it didn’t. I didn’t sleep for eight nights. Then I slept for three full days. The doctors said I was fine. I think about those guys a lot. They were Rincon Indians, Herold and Gerald Little Chief. Mom had the concrete here replaced because of the bloodstains, then she thought their blood should be honored, not hauled away, so she had the new slab torn out and the rip-rap from the old one put back in. So that’s why you see the stains and all the cracks.” One of the Jack Russells nosed the floor, then looked at Bradley and cocked his head. “Come on, there’s more.”

They stood around the neat opening in the floor, above which the Ping-Pong table and section of concrete were suspended by the hydraulic lifts. Hood saw that the jacks were freshly greased and the welds were neat and ample. Stairs led down.

“The hydraulics came from city of Escondido garbage trucks I stole,” said Bradley. “Two of them. They were surprisingly fun to drive. Now, watch your step coming down, guys. You dogs- wait. ” Hood watched as Bradley and Erin disappeared beneath the floor one step at a time. The dogs really did wait. Hood brought up the rear behind Beth, Owens, and Reyes. Thomas awoke when Hood stepped into the bunker. His eyes searched Hood’s face and Hood had no idea what a three-day-old human being could see or think.

Hood snugged the blanket to him and looked around the vault. It was roughly twenty-by-twenty feet, with an eight-foot ceiling. The light was low voltage, bright and clean. It was cold. There were three floor safes and a gun safe. Along one wall was a workbench or a long table of some kind, covered by colorful blankets. Beneath the blankets were irregular shapes that Hood could not identify. Beth looked at him in frank disbelief.

“Did Suzanne build this?” asked Erin.

“I did, honey. It took six months. I excavated by hand so no one would know about it. I spread the dirt and rocks all over the ranch here where it wouldn’t be suspicious. You never remarked on the patches of fresh dirt when we’d ride the quads, Erin. Did you wonder how they got there?”

“I never noticed the dirt. All I saw was you and all I heard was music. I was a fool. When did you come down here?”

“When you were working or asleep. Here, look what’s in the safes.” He knelt and spun the dial and threw open one of the doors, then quickly opened the two others. Hood saw the bricks of vacuum-packed cash, the jewelry and watches and loose stones. Bradley, still kneeling, stared into one of them as if hypnotized.

Erin stood above him, staring into the same safe, her hands raised to her mouth in disbelief. Her voice was a whisper. “Did you steal all this, too?”

“The cash was my cut of what I smuggled south to Mexico. Drug money, of course. The watches and jewelry and stones I took as payment or bought cheap from friends. I stole some of them myself, back when I was young and really idiotic.”

Erin looked at him with a numb expression. She snugged the collar of her Indian blanket coat up against her neck. “You. . your whole life was doing things like this?”

“There was also school and hapkido and football. And then the sheriff’s department.”

“Why?”

Still staring into the safe, Bradley stood and put his hands on his hips. Finally he turned to Erin and his look glanced off Erin to the others, one at a time, in turn. “I loved it. It was very intense and lucrative but mainly fun. Later, I told myself it was to provide for you and our family to come. But that was bullshit and I knew it. We could have lived just fine off your music and a deputy’s salary. I don’t love jewelry unless it’s on you. Or fancy watches. And I don’t really have anything to spend all this cash on. The getting of it was what mattered. It was a way to feel. . alive.”

“How did I make you feel? Dead?”

“Blessed. Chosen. Lucky beyond compare. After a job I couldn’t wait to get back to you. You were my reward for the hard work it was to get this stuff. It’s not easy working for a drug cartel. The first time I met Carlos Herredia I peed my pants. He’s a demanding employer. You never know if he’s going to hug you or shoot you. And stealing other people’s things? It’s not like anybody just lets you take what you want. Try taking a toy away from a two-year-old. And all the while I was trying to be a good cop. I really was. I wouldn’t recommend that kind of life, except maybe to a few people.”

“How about to your son over there, Bradley? Would you recommend it to him?”

Hood watched Bradley shake his head and look down. “No. Not after meeting him, I would not. Erin?”

“What?”

“There’s more.”

Bradley went to the workbench and pulled away one of the brightly striped blankets. Everyone crowded in to look. “All that stuff Mom said about her being a direct descendant of Joaquin? It was all true. These are some of his things. She died before she could show them to me, but I was a curious boy. All this stuff was hidden here in the barn. It wasn’t hard to find. Even Hood found it. I didn’t mean that as an insult, Charlie. What I meant was, even a relative stranger to our family was able to find it.”