Bradley Jones met Mike Finnegan at the Bordello after his night patrol shift. Bradley had changed out of his uniform because he was welcome in this bar but his uniform was not. It was one in the morning.
"I like it better here when Erin plays that stage," said Finnegan.
"She can't play every night."
"Of course, I liked it better here when it was a real bordello, too. Fantastic city, Los Angeles in the eighteen hundreds."
Bradley looked at him and shook his head. "What can I do for you, Mike?"
"I just wanted to hear more about the Lancaster shoot-out. The headlines and pictures and news footage have all been very thorough but I wanted your insider's story. What a mess that must have been."
"It's all old news by now. And I wasn't there."
"But surely you've heard a thousand stories. Share some with me!" Finnegan smiled and his face flushed. To Bradley, Mike looked every one of his fifty-two years, except when he smiled. Then he looked like an eighth grader who'd just gotten away with something-delighted and eager to try it again. Bradley realized that Mike's delight was what made him so easy to talk to. It made you want to help keep that smile on his face.
So Bradley told him what he'd heard: An informant had told an unnamed LASD deputy that a gunrunner was unloading a hundred new machine pistols to L.A. Mara Salvatruchas working for the Gulf Cartel. The deputy had told his boss and his boss had put together a seven-member take-down team and a cover team of four radio cars and a helicopter.
"This must have been Commander Dez," said Mike. "She's the most quoted LASD officer in the papers and on TV-except for the PR people, of course. Attractive. Ambition written all over her pretty little face."
Bradley nodded. "None of that's a secret."
"But who was this mystery deputy, I wonder. The one with the very good information."
Bradley shrugged and drank his bourbon.
"Guess, Bradley. Offer up a guess."
"We're the biggest sheriff's department in the country, Mike. What good would a guess do?"
"Just tell me if you know him." Mike beamed and drank his scotch. He looked like a boy who had just gotten exactly what he wanted for Christmas.
"I don't know him."
"Well, his informant turned out to have the right stuff, didn't he?"
Bradley nodded and smiled. "It was one hundred percent accurate, Mike."
Finnegan rubbed his hands together and smiled up at the ceiling, then took another drink. "Two couriers shot dead by Gravas, and another by your people. And two very fine sheriff's deputies fallen in the line of duty. Five deaths. Five."
"Vicky Sunderland and Bob Dunn," Bradley said, his voice lowered in respect.
"What a terrible shame. And, to add to it, the precious cargo of machine pistols vanishes with Gravas, only to be intercepted by Charlie Hood and his ATF team two days later. With quite a bit of money, also. I couldn't help but feel that the glory should have belonged to LASD."
Bradley sipped again but said nothing. It rankled him that Hood and ATF had gotten the guns, money and glory. He could live with the rankle. But Dez had quickly handed him over to Internal Affairs for the intel that had led to two dead deputies, and IA had landed hard. IA could exonerate him, or they could discipline him, or they could take his job. Bradley understood that they had power over him even the U.S. Constitution couldn't deflect. He couldn't plead the Fifth; he couldn't hire a lawyer. Larry King could not help now. The IA discussions were secret, their findings not subject to appeal. IA was clearly suspicious of Bradley's good luck in the Stevie Carrasco kidnapping. They wanted his car-wash shoot-out informant, and they wanted him now. So far Bradley had wriggled out of it by saying his man was back down in Mexico again. He promised to produce him as soon as he returned. He'd have to produce someone. He hoped that Herredia would be able to hook him up with a convincing actor, but Bradley hadn't seen El Tigre in two weeks, the weekly run to El Dorado now impossible to make with IA shadowing him to and from work and home and anywhere else he went. He worked his patrols diligently, wondering if a departmental suspension was on its way. He felt like a rat being tormented by terriers. All he wanted was to put this suspicion behind him and make his cash runs to Mexico again, bust some of the Gulf Cartel's L.A. soldiers, love his wife and prepare their lives for the baby to come.
"Is the wounded courier going to make it?"
"They say so."
"I heard his name is Octavio."
Bradley nodded.
Mike leaned toward him and spoke softly. "Do you feel a division of loyalty?"
"Division? Between what and what?"
"Your department and your working relationships south of the border."
Bradley shook his head and smiled but he couldn't stop the jolt of adrenaline that went through him. "Mike, you're an idiot."
"Oh, but I did manage to help you and Ron get that product south last year, now, didn't I? In fact, without me, our friend Charlie would have found you out. Without a doubt. So instead of being a deputy right now, you'd be an inmate somewhere-and I don't mean in your wife's band. It's totally different on the other side of those bars, I can assure you. So don't call me names, Bradley. It makes you look shortsighted and mean-spirited. The sooner we can become totally honest with each other, the greater things we can do."
Bradley said nothing. Rat, he thought. Terriers. He sipped his drink and glanced out at the singer, then looked at Finnegan. Mike's mouth was tight and concern lined his forehead.
"Mike, I've been wondering about something. I don't think we met for the first time at the Viper Room last year. I'd never seen Owens before then. But I'd seen you. I'm sure of it now."
Finnegan's blue eyes twinkled. "Well, now that you bring it up, I'd like to let you in on something-you and I first laid eyes on each other when you were less than a year old. I was acquainted with your mother. But I kept my distance as you grew up."
Another shot of adrenaline ran through Bradley, this one cold and sharp. "How come you never told me that?"
"A time for everything and everything in its time."
"Talk to me."
"I introduced your mother to your father."
"Why?"
"To give you a chance at magnificence."
"What shit."
"Really? I'm extremely proud of the way you came out."
"My father is selfish and unaccomplished. The only skill he ever developed was the seduction of women. Then he exploits them."
"But he was also strong and smart and charming and utterly without morals. The perfect partner for a"-Mike cupped his hand to Bradley's ear and whispered-"Murrieta!"
"Then let me be perfectly honest with you, Mike. All the Murrieta stuff I told you in the Viper Room that night was bullshit. Like I've got an outlaw's head in a jar. Like I'd tell you, a complete stranger, if I did. Well, I don't have his head. I don't know what got into me."
"I do. That night you were overstimulated by your proximity to Erin. You were throwing off sparks. I mean that literally-your thoughts were sparking and dying, sparking and dying. Like fireworks in the sky. Now, Bradley, if I'm within thirty feet of a person having clear, strong thoughts, well, I can hear them. And I can see what that person is imagining. It's a gift, most of the time. But things can get a little cacophonous sometimes, if I'm in a crowded bar for instance. I've learned to isolate the thoughts and concentrate on what I need to know. But anyway, Bradley, you were not in control of your own thinking. You were only capable of reaction to her. I've seen that before, young man. It's love with obsession in it. It's the grandest love of all. And one of the most entertaining qualities a man or woman can have."
Bradley stared at Mike, thinking, Fuck you, Mike. You hear me now?
Finnegan sighed and looked out toward the stage.
"Okay, Mike, you must be right. I was not in control of my own thoughts. Why else would I make up a story about having the head of an outlaw in a jar?"
"You are proud of the head, as well you should be."
"All lies."
"Oh?"
"Made the whole thing up."
"Bradley? Can I tell you something?"
"Anything you want."
"The head you have is not Joaquin's. It belonged to Chappo, who rode with Joaquin's horse-gang. Harry Love killed five of Joaquin's gang that day at Cantua Creek, including Chappo. Harry chose the most frightening and dramatic head and collected it as evidence of his own heroism. Joaquin was fair-skinned and blue-eyed and his hair was light brown. This is not an uncommon combination in his native Sonora, where the Spanish influence is strong. He wore his hair long. He had a lined and soulful face for a man so young. He stood six feet three inches. He was a charming and even-tempered man until his wife, Rosa, was raped. Joaquin's English was very good, having grown up near the border and working his early life in gringo company. El Famoso was struck by two bullets that day at Cantua Creek-one bounced off the vest that Owens delivered to you as a wedding gift."
Bradley felt his breath shorten. He looked long and hard at the little man.
"From you?"
"And Owens, of course."
"I'm running out of things to feel about you, Mike."
"Then stop feeling and listen-the other bullet went through the back of his thigh. We used kerosene to clean it out. It was not fatal."
"You must take me for a complete fool."
"I'm trying not to."
"You don't know anything. You make it all up."
"I rode with Murrieta. Briefly."
Bradley started a smile but he couldn't finish it. "Then when did he die?"
"Twenty-two years later, in eighteen seventy-five. He was fifty-five years old. I was privileged to attend the funeral."
"Where did he die?"
"In El Salado, where he was born. He lived out his life quietly, adored and protected by the villagers. He was well-off from his robbing and horse thievery. I was able to visit him there."
"Why didn't you tell my mother about the head not being his? There was nothing about this in her journals. She wrote hundreds of pages about herself and about Joaquin, but there was nothing about him living out his life in Mexico. Nothing about his blue eyes and fair skin and light brown hair."
Mike reached into his blazer pocket and handed Bradley a leather-bound book. Jones opened it and recognized his mother's beautiful handwriting. The date on the first entry was July 14, 1991, and on the last entry March 23, 1992.
"I eventually told her, of course," said Finnegan. "We must operate on the basis of truth. It's all in the journal. She was delighted that Joaquin turned out to be even more mysterious than his legend made him out to be. She was fried with excitement, to be blunt. Later I took this book from her. I apologize to you for the theft. Though I have to chuckle when I say this: She was changing your diaper when I bagged it. Your unrepentantly useless father and I were killing off a bottle of vodka. He went to get a fresh lime and I just dropped that little book into my pocket."
"Why?"
"Something told me that I would need to make an impression on you someday."
"I'm not impressed. You just gave her the same bullshit you're giving me. Riding with Murrieta. Only she believed it."
"She came to believe it."
"You weren't at Cantua Creek, Mike. That would make you a hundred and eighty years old."
"Your math is good but your context is faulty. This is like trying to prove the existence of a forest to a man who denies the existence of trees."
"More bullshit." Bradley listened to his own voice and even he had trouble hearing the conviction in it.
Finnegan drank and smiled very slightly. "Your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was an imaginative man. He imagined his legend before he began to create it. He saw no difference between what he could imagine and what he could accomplish. He was prone to superstition, prone to gesture and romance, prone to belief. Your mother was the same way. They were both obsessive lovers, like you. You'll be more like them someday. It will just take you longer to get there. In many ways human beings grow up much more slowly than they used to. I've seen this in just a few short generations. Evolution can't be hurried. When you are ready to see, you will see, and when you're ready to believe, you will believe."
Bradley felt surrounded by invisible terriers, unable to find a target. When you are ready to see, you will see. He tried to go cool instead. "Well, if I'm supposed to weep or something, I'm just not."
"I love your youth. Dearly. The journal is yours to keep with the others. Now your collection is complete. In the back of that volume are a couple of letters Suzanne wrote to me. Illuminating, perhaps. They're yours, too."
Mike finished his drink and pushed away from the table. "Well."
"Where are you going?"
"Out. November is my absolute favorite month."
"Hold on. Let's get a bottle. We'll talk about imagination and belief and El Famoso."
"Maybe another time, Bradley. I just want to spend some hours outdoors now, walking my city on an autumn night."
"Tell me more about him. I want to know."
"When you're ready. You'll be very busy soon. Hearty congratulations on Erin's pregnancy. I'm very happy for both of you."
"Who told you?"
"You did. You've spent the last hour telling me about your wife and your child to come-more of the mental sparks that you let off when you think of Erin. Just like in the Viper Room."
"But I didn't tell you. I absolutely and purposely did not because she…"
"She what, Bradley? She neither likes nor trusts me?"
"Go to hell, Mike. Whoever you think you are I'm not impressed."
"You have such strong and beautiful names in your family-Joaquin, Rosa, Suzanne. Even Bradley. I wonder who will come next. He or she will be yours to name, young man. And Erin's, of course. Consider carefully. Names have different polarities. Different weights. Different histories."