T. Parker - Iron River

Sharon spotted the white ribbon a few minutes later, and I backed the Sun King to it and with some difficulty we managed to push/ drag/drop Uncle Chester’s tarped and dry-iced remains into the waiting hole. Bradley’s men had left one shovel that Sharon and I used to cover Chet. I offered to do the spadework myself, but Sharon insisted on doing half of it, and I watched her during her turns from the meager shade of the Joshua tree. She was grim and silent and determined about it. I could tell that every shovelful of sand she put between herself and Chet was something she needed to do to keep him away from her, literally and symbolically, too. I closed with the Lord’s prayer though I kind of hurried through it. I thought of my mother.

The Love 32s were more or less loose in the Sun King, since the wooden gun crates had been used for the new jeans for charity. The ruse was Bradley’s idea, though how he learned that ATFE agents were surveilling Pace Arms I’ll probably never know. Sharon had found late-summer bargain beach blankets on sale at a supermarket for three ninety-nine each, and in these forty blankets we wrapped and folded and duct-taped our thousand guns. We had guns under the motor home beds, guns in the overhead sleeper, guns in the cupboards and closets, guns in the bathroom and shower, guns in the bench seat storage chests, guns under the dining table and upon it and piled on the padded seating around it, guns in the walkway from cab to bath. The silencers and extra-capacity magazines, being smaller and more conveniently shaped, fit nicely inside the new but inexpensive pillow cases that Sharon found at Big Lots, and these we stashed anyplace that wasn’t already filled with guns.

We crossed into Mexico at Nogales, were stopped briefly for the usual questions by the U.S. ICE agents, and were simply waved through by their Mexican counterparts. Shortly we were intercepted by a small flotilla of Suburbans that escorted us into the middle of Baja California. The flotilla personnel were either Mexican Federal Judicial Police or narcos dressed in the uniforms of the MFJP. Bradley had told me that both were in the employ of Carlos Herredia.

After two hours of driving, we were suddenly run onto the very narrow shoulder of the road by several of the Suburbans. We were boarded, and at gunpoint we were herded back into the vehicle, where the policemen blindfolded us. I held hands with Sharon as they did this, wondering if we were about to be shot. I honestly couldn’t figure what we had done to deserve that. But we were then politely helped out of the Sun King and into one of the Suburbans, and a short hour later we were unblindfolded within Herredia’s compound, known as El Dorado.

I got out of the Suburban and helped Sharon down, then I looked out at the beautiful hacienda and the adobe outbuildings and the casitas and the glimmering pool beneath the palapas, and beyond that the airstrip with its sock luffing in the breeze, and all of this surrounded by green ranchland dabbed with cattle, and I wondered how a country with such a rich pastoral soul could have descended into such brutality. You don’t have to be a student of history to realize that it has more than a little to do with people like me.

Late that first night when Sharon and I went back to our casita with the six hundred thousand dollars, I sat for a long while looking at the four rolling suitcases that contained it and I felt briefly discontent. I love the Love 32. I know it will become a part of history. I loved designing it. I loved procuring its elements and recruiting its builders. I loved making it. I love shooting it. I even loved smuggling it down here. I know that lives will be taken with my creations-the lives of the bad and the good. The destruction is only just beginning. It will grow. But I am an American and I believe we choose our actions and I believe that the business of America is business. We are free. I’ve made my fortune and I’ve made myself and for this I will not apologize. We all need a break in these tough economic times.

Right now I’m sitting by the El Dorado swimming pool. It’s late morning and warm but not hot. Herredia is doing laps. He doesn’t really swim, he pounds. He’s terrifically strong and he’s been at this for forty minutes.

Bradley left last night to reunite with Erin in Valley Center. He was particularly moony and distracted yesterday, a newlywed pining for his bride. And he was richer.

Sharon is in our casita, soon to arrive. She slept late, as usual, and it will take her a while to get ready to face the world. Her ruined wedding and Chester weigh heavily on her.

When she gets here, I’m going to ask her to take a short walk with me, just down the road a bit. I’m going to tell her what it was like the first time I saw her sitting there at her new workstation at Pace Arms, a seventeen-year-old girl who said she was eighteen because she needed the money. I’m going to tell her how it felt when we hardly talked for a year after I told her I loved her. I’m going to tell her what it was like seeing her sitting there at her old workstation at defunct Pace Arms, a twenty-one-year-old woman who had just had her heart broken. I’ve got the ring, a carat and a half, near colorless, SI1, brilliant cut, set in platinum, in a box in the pocket of my cargo shorts. I’m no genius, but I’m not going to make the same mistake that idiot Daryl made.

Bradley came home to Valley Center late at night after a ten-hour patrol shift in L.A. County. He parked his Porsche out front of the ranch house and stood for a moment on the deck. Erin would be home soon from her own L.A. gig.

He looked out at the three-quarter moon and heard the breeze hissing across the hills. The rodeo arena was still up from the wedding, and the bunting still dangled in places from the buildings, and the tiny lights still twinkled in the big oak tree in the barnyard. It was Bradley’s job to get the place back to normal, but he liked the wedding stuff, wanted it around for a while. What a great three days those had been.

Tonight he’d been assigned to a humorless old veteran named Spencer, and the first thing Spencer had said to him was Boy Scouts don’t touch my radio unless I tell them to. Boy Scouts being his name for Explorer cadets. Over the hours, Spencer had lectured Bradley on the dangers of female deputies, use of intimidation during citizen interviews, and the use of force in detaining suspects. I’m still quite fond of the old baton, he rhymed with an asinine grin. Spencer coached third base in the department slow-pitch league and took offense when he invited Bradley to try out and Bradley told him he had better things to do with his time. After shift, the big deputy wordlessly left Bradley with the car and gear check, then shuffled into the substation, headed for the shower. Bradley had stood in the parking area for a long moment, considered the substation and the deputies coming and going, the fleet of aging patrol cars, felt the cotton-poly blend of his uniform shirt on his skin and thought: I’m lucky to have more than this . He’d seen Caroline Vega in the lunchroom before shift again, always a good thing, and they had continued their ongoing dialogue about the bad guys having all the fun but being too dumb to enjoy it. Just kidding. Of course. He’d use her someday. He had the feeling their lives would cross, and he was almost never wrong when he felt this way. Draper had taught him that the power of one was one, but the power of two was many times greater, and the power of three many times greater than that. And so on.

He showered and changed, then went into the barn and cleared the Ping-Pong table and found the switch. The table rose and revealed the stairs. He walked down into the vault and hit the wall switch, and the floor/ceiling replaced itself over him, Ping-Pong table and all.