T. Parker - The Jaguar

“She’s the only thing that matters.”

“I know this type of emotion.”

“You’re lucky to know it, Fidel.”

Candelario looked at him darkly and Bradley understood. “She and our two children were taken by Armenta’s son, Saturnino. He left them hanging in a warehouse and he sent word where to find them. I found them. Just as I will find him.”

Later Herredia showed off his newest passion-a horse breeding and training facility. It was tucked back behind the house against the sharp Baja hillsides. He had already built the stables and paddocks and there was an earthen track and an infield of very green grass. The sprinklers came on and Bradley watched their spray crisscrossing in the moonlight.

“I need the stud,” Herredia said. “I have the mares but I need a magnificent horse to make my racers.”

“I know a breeder in Temecula,” said Caroline.

“I want the best!” said Herredia. He gave her his most engaging smile.

“Something tells me you’ll find a way to get it,” she said.

Bradley saw Fidel look at her with sharp eyes and no expression on his face. You’re right, my man, he thought: she’s a beauty and a match for you.

They all talked late into the hot Baja night. They sat in an outside pavilion around a rough-hewn table with bottles of tequila sparkling before them. The water of the swimming pool shifted with wedges of light and shadow and above them the stars were adamant at this uncertain latitude. Felipe sat away from the table where the light faded nearly to darkness, his shotgun across his lap, and whenever Bradley looked over at him his posture was unchanged and his withered old face like a gargoyle held half light and half shadow.

Bradley drank slightly and let the tequila-fueled energy rise around him. He had sat here with Herredia so many nights, earning large money, missing Erin, looking into the stars and sending thoughts to her, unable to use a satellite phone for reasons of security, his cell phone useless. Now when he remembered those nights a wave of nostalgia swept him up and he felt weightless and unable to determine his own direction, like a cork bobbing in a hostile sea. His throat tightened and his heart beat hard. He breathed deeply. Keep yourself together, he told himself, for her. He thought a brief prayer to God. And another to El Famoso. One to Malverde and another to anybody or anything that could hear him. I don’t care what you are or what you want from me. Save them. Save them. Just save them.

He looked at Caroline sitting next to El Tigre and paying close attention to another of his stories. She was two years older than Bradley, dark-haired and brown-eyed, strong and forceful. Her cheekbones were high and scarred by old acne and her tightly gathered ponytail called attention to the scars. Her smile was rare. She was fearless in bad situations and apparently not satisfied with what other people might call normal life. Caroline reminded him greatly of his mother, which was one of the reasons he noticed and later sought her out and brought her close.

But I see that my beautiful dorado is now in the mouth of a great white shark that is the size of Isla Cerralvo and I must land it with my little Shimano reel that is only for the small fish!

Cleary smiled along blearily but when Bradley caught his eye he saw something acute and sober in it. Good, he thought, you’ll need all the clarity you can muster, Jack.

Fidel said little at first and appeared to be glaring at the glass of tequila that he had not sipped. He wore a tan T-shirt and a gold cross on a chain, tan camo pants and suede combat boots. Bradley wondered why Mexican outlaws so loved the military. It had to be more than to fool the people they preyed on.

Bradley and Fidel spoke briefly of their families and where they grew up, then of cars, sports, guns, music, Obama and Calderon. Somehow Lorca and Neruda and Urrea came up and they spoke of them too. But all of this had the air of obligation to it and their words came out flat and lifeless because their hearts were in other places.

“Where do you think she is?” asked Bradley.

“Armenta is strong in the south. Veracruz, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Campeche.”

“But he has safe houses all over Mexico.”

“He will take her where he is strongest.”

“It’s a different world down there.”

“Yes, jungle. Rainforest. Not desert. Jungle rots the body and the soul.”

“Is Saturnino still his enforcer?”

“Yes. He is a murderer and a rapist.”

Bradley felt his heartbeat accelerate. Now this would be added as fuel for his terrible dreams and images. “Maybe we’ll both get what we want.”

Fidel leaned toward him. His eyes were bright and dark and his nose was hooked. “We have one of Armenta’s men. We took him by surprise in the night, much as your wife was taken. He will know where she is. The difficulty is making him want to tell us before he expires.”

“Then lighten up on him, Fidel. If you kill him he won’t say much.”

“We should leave this to our capable men. We all have different natures.”

“Let me have a try at him.”

Fidel looked at Bradley. “No. You would not have self-control.”

“True.”

“Only self-control can get you out of Mexico alive.”

“I’m getting her out of Mexico alive.”

“I will do what can be done. And if it ends as it did for my mujer then I will have one more fellow prisoner in this hell that is life. You.”

Later when everyone had gone to their rooms Bradley walked past the pool and through the gate and down to the pasture and stood for a while looking at the hillsides to the east, brushed with moonlight. Low in the distance a slick of rainwater caught the light more brightly. Bradley had never seen standing water in this part of Baja. Horses stirred in the paddock.

Again he opened his mind to the raids of memory. What memories were here. For nearly three years, from the time he was just seventeen years old, he had driven to El Dorado once a week and returned home with an average of twelve thousand dollars in cash. The North Baja Cartel took in roughly four hundred thousand dollars a week off the L.A. streets and Bradley drove the collected money south to make his percentage. He had earned nearly a million-six in those first two and a half years, almost pure profit, little overhead and no taxes.

In those early days he had posed as a fisherman, a surfer, a social worker, a church charities representative. He had lugged fishing gear, camping equipment, surfboards, piles of new and used clothing, Bibles and religious literature, cases of canned food and water and sports drinks. He had used several vehicles, some with doctored plates, and several different sets of false documents. Later, his LASD shield became useful at times. Still later, when Herredia brought several U.S. Customs agents under his influence, complementing the Mexican inspectors he already owned, Bradley’s job had gotten much easier. The good old days, he thought. Money and more money. He had enjoyed it immensely.

But now as he stood in this desert and looked at the far hills he felt betrayed by what he had once thought of as bravery and confidence. And betrayed by the burden of Murrieta. Wasn’t it all just stupidity and foolishness? What had he gotten for it? A small fortune, yes. And for a while, on the legitimate side of his life, good LASD performance reviews and a minor hero’s status.

But he had also been shot and stabbed and involved in a shootout that had claimed six lives. This earned him an ongoing LASD Internal Affairs investigation that stopped his Mexico deliveries a year ago and dried up his largest stream of revenue.

One year ago, he thought. One cursed year ago everything changed. IA had begun tailing him at work, then had him reassigned from Narcotics to a desk job in Fraud; they had spied on him during his free time and even tried to spy on him at home; they had interviewed his fellow deputies; and they had no doubt gained access to his phone records and bank transactions. They were a thousand terriers yapping and biting at his ankles. The terriers had only begrudgingly given him these ten days off even though his vacation time would cover it.