T Parker - The border Lords

She shook back her thick brown hair and smiled, a cagey and knowing thing. "I get what you're about, Bradley Jones. And don't call me Miranda."

"Yes, Commander."

She sat back and studied him. "How old are you?"

"Twenty and a half."

"I see you're married."

Bradley nodded and said his wife's name out loud and felt the predictable flutter in his chest.

"Children?"

"Someday."

"Do you plan on staying with us?"

"Absolutely."

"Why did your mother claim to be a descendant of Joaquin Murrieta?"

"My mother had an active imagination."

"Was it an excuse for what she did?"

"She was proud of what she did."

"I felt sorry for her."

"Why?"

"She seemed compelled to act. Almost against her will."

"That's a popular theory."

"Is it only a theory?"

"I'll tell you something I've never told anyone at this department. She lived for her job just like you live for yours. And I don't mean just the teaching job. I mean the other one, too. I found this out later. Reading her journals."

"But why? It was dangerous and hurtful and it got her killed."

"It was dangerous, exciting, and a turn-on. And lucrative, too. She never hurt anyone. Not one person. She saved an old man's life with CPR on one of her robberies. She gave money to the poor-real money, not a hundred here or a hundred there but scores of thousands of dollars. Yes, it got her killed. Something always gets us killed, sooner or later."

"I'll take the later, Bradley. I hope you do, too. We're off to a decent start-we might be the only two LASD deputies stabbed in the line of duty before the age of twenty-one."

"We are. I researched it."

"I'll never forget those videos your mother sent to the networks. That mask with the crystal on it. The derringer. Her voice. Trying to explain herself. One of the strangest things I've seen. You remind me of her. Not looks. 'Tude."

"I loved her and I miss her." Bradley lifted the briefcase to his lap and felt his cheeks flush. "She loved red Corvettes."

Dez eyed him. "Thanks for the tip, Deputy Jones."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Don't call me that, either."

"I'm left with Commander Dez."

"That is who I am."

"I like the sound of Sheriff Dez better."

"I'll remember that when I run for office."

"Also remember that you can't buy the kind of publicity that a high-profile bust will get you."

"I hear Allison Murrieta again."

"That's a nice compliment, Commander Dez. I'll give you information as I get it. I'll do everything I can to make sure it's good stuff."

"But what if your man is just telling tales to pay for his next fix?"

"If that's the case, you can blame it all on me. But it won't be the case. He's good for this. But I do ask one thing of you, my commander."

Bradley smiled and waited a beat.

"Let's hear it."

"Leave my name off of this as much as you reasonably can. We new hires are competitive. Everyone wants to outdo the others-except for the clock punchers. I had great good luck stumbling into the Stevie deal, I'll admit that. But if I'm shown to have even more great good luck in find out about Gravas, well, my peers are going to hate me and my superiors are going to wonder."

"Maybe I'm wondering."

"I was born lucky. I've got more luck than I want. Gravas is for you and I want no part of him."

"What do you want?"

"For you to be a friend and mentor."

"You really puzzle me, Bradley Jones."

"I puzzle my own wife."

She studied him for a long moment, then wrote a number on the back of her card and handed it across the desk to him. Bradley stood and took up his briefcase and walked out, holding the card between his fingers like a cigarette.

Erin and the Inmates took the Bordello Bar stage that night in L.A. for a sold-out show, Erin trim and fair-skinned in lavender leather and ankle-high lavender boots with stainless zippers. Sitting at a table near the back, Bradley felt his breath catch as she led the Inmates on. The crowd went off.

Mike Finnegan sat on one side of him and his alleged daughter, Owens, on the other. Bradley had met them at one of Erin's performances back before they were married. At first Mike and Owens seemed to be groupies of some sort but they had turned out to be more than that. Exactly what, Bradley was not sure. They had made a few calls that had helped him send a large shipment of Love 32s through Charlie Hood's fingers and into the hands of Carlos Herredia. Mike knew way more than he should about various criminal enterprises in the American West and in Mexico, but he also knew more than he should about law enforcement, history, ornithology, astronomy, viticulture, the wholesaling of bathroom products, underground comics from the sixties, black-powder gunsmithing and gold mining. It was fairly obvious that Mike was not Owens's father but Bradley saw no reason to spoil their fun, or whatever it was they were having.

Erin strapped on a white and gold Les Paul and the crowd went off again.

"God, she gets more beautiful every month," said Owens.

Mike flinched. "Yes, she truly does."

Bradley clapped and yelped loudly for his wife. Her hair was red and lush and held up on the left side by a clip that a fan had made for her, a cute little porcupine with big eyes and quills that were laser pointers that shot a moving pattern of red dots to various points throughout the small and very crowded bar. Her hair caught the stage lights with a vengeance, he thought, the sparks and pops of loose electricity.

"Red, red and more red," said Finnegan.

"Like your hair is supposed to be," said Owens.

"Change is good. Where does it say that a man can't change the color of his hair?"

"Beware of little men with big ideas," Owens said to Bradley. Finnegan grinned and threw up his stubby little hands and waved over the waitress for another round.

Bradley sat back and sipped Dickel on the rocks and gave himself over to Erin and her music. He'd fallen in love with her doing just this, nightclubbing on the Sunset Strip with a fake ID, age sixteen. July third, he thought. Hot and humid for summer. He'd jacked a Porsche Carrera-just to drive that night, not to sell-and he was trying to tamp down the adrenaline with vodka. A skosh tipsy. Her band was called the Cheater Slicks then, and her hair was longer and she wore jeans with holes in them and ropers and a skimpy green silk halter. By the end of the first song of the first set he was unquestionably in love with her. He went back the next two nights and tried to catch her eye but failed. Near the end of the third night Bradley bribed the bouncer to get backstage and there, she had really seen him for the first time. He said something to the effect that looking at her was like walking into a beautiful room. And this was their beginning.

The Inmates were a guitar, keyboard, bass and drums, and their rock was rough and electric. There were shards of metal in it, shades of country, bits of barrelhouse. But Erin's voice was clear and articulate so it sounded to Bradley at times as if she was trying to sing her way out of the music, like she was something pure stuck on something wild, an angel lashed to a Harley.

In the relative quiet between the second and third songs, Finnegan leaned in close to Bradley. "Tell me, how is Felipe?"

"Felipe who?"

"You know, the puckered man with the eternal shotgun. You'd be surprised how forthcoming he can be with a little perico in the offing."

Parakeet, thought Bradley, narco slang for cocaine, because it makes you chatter like a parakeet.

"He's just developing a taste for the stuff after thirty sober years of drug trafficking," said Finnegan. "And how is El Dorado?"

"You're babbling, Mike. You're making no sense to me."