The Famous and the Dead by T. Jefferson Parker

Author:T. Jefferson Parker [Parker, T. Jefferson]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Thrillers, Crime, General, Occult & Supernatural, Fiction
ISBN: 9781101624180
Google: zkufkazA89UC
Amazon: 0525953175
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Published: 2013-04-18T04:00:00+00:00

24

That Friday Bradley embarked on his first Baja run in nearly a year and a half. The evening was crisp and breezy, and the sunset was framed by towers of black clouds limned in orange. It was a glorious feeling for him to leave Rocky Carrasco’s El Monte warehouse without the Blands tailing him. Heaven on earth. He kept checking the mirrors and smiling to himself. He wore the Santana Panama for good luck.

His heart was filled with nostalgic memories of such nights, and the hidden compartments in his Cayenne Turbo were filled with bricks of cash. So were the bottoms of the plastic tubs that otherwise held new clothing for poor Mexican children. The cash amounted to $412,500 and he’d end up with approximately $14,000 for himself. Of which he would lay off $2,000 each to Caroline Vega and Jack Cleary. All of it was Southern California drug profit for Carlos Herredia’s North Baja Cartel.

He drove the speed limit south on Interstate 5, past the nuclear power plant at San Onofre and then along the hills of Camp Pendleton. To his right the Pacific Ocean looked plated with gold, which made him think of the silly gold-plated pistols that Herredia loved so much, which made him think of drug lords so he put on a recording of the song Erin had written in captivity four months ago. It was called “City of Gold,” and she’d been forced to write it by Benjamin Armenta, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug lords, as a way of gaining greater fame and notoriety for himself. Thus, it was a lowly narcocorrido, one of many such ballads commissioned over the years by cartel players in order to glorify themselves. But because Armenta came from Veracruz he’d made Erin write the song in the well-known jarocho style of that city. So, although the song told the story of a violent drug lord, it did so with exuberance, a lovely harp-decorated melody, a hint of Caribbean rhythm, and exotic percussion instruments. The dissonance between subject matter and sound somehow made the song beautiful.

Armenta had never heard the full version because Bradley had blown him into eternity right there in his own recording studio in his secret castle on the Yucatán. Erin had foretold such an ending in her song. What a journey that had been, he thought now, what an astonishing ten days of trying to rescue her from the hell that he had helped put her in. He remembered the moment he swung open the door to the studio control room and through the glass saw Erin at the piano, facing him, and Armenta standing with his accordion on and his back to Bradley. He pictured it all again: charging into the hushed tracking room, opening fire with his silent machine pistol, the window glass shattering and falling, the dozens of bullets that the bearlike Armenta took before he finally went down in a heap, draped over his instrument. Bradley turned the volume up and started the song again.

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