Finnegan smiled at him, eyes aflicker with mischief. 'I'm sorry, Bradley. I must have you mixed up with someone else.'
'Listen to the music, man.'
'She is in fabulous voice tonight. It becomes stronger with every season. Summer was better than spring and now fall is better yet. Climates of vocal change. I can hear them in her.'
'Shut up, Mike. Have another drink.'
'And you must, too. These are on us tonight. After all, we sailed in here without a flag and boarded your table like pirates.'
Owens considered Bradley with her cool gray eyes, then turned her attention back to the stage. She was an actor, beautiful, dark-haired, quiet. Bradley found her inexplicable as her father but much more exotic. He had seen her in two commercials-one for a cell phone and one for a home improvement store. As she looked away Bradley's gaze was drawn to Owens's wrists, each underside ringed with scars. She often wore bracelets to help hide them. Tonight she wore long sleeves.
'I wonder if Sean Gravas will smell it out,' said Finnegan. 'The setup.'
Bradley swallowed his bourbon and water hard, an ice piece going down in the reflex.
'Wrong pipe, Bradley?'
'I don't know what you're talking about,' said Bradley. 'That's above my pay scale.'
Finnegan looked at him dubiously now. 'Yes. I must have you mixed you up with someone else.'
Bradley felt the anger shoot through him. He was prone to it and had spent most of his short life trying to keep it down. True, Finnegan had helped him with the Love 32s, but now all Bradley could see was a small, annoying man who thought he knew things, a meddler, a dilettante. Bradley's instincts told him to keep Finnegan and Erin far apart, on either side of himself, that they were elemental opposites of some kind and only catastrophe could come from mixing them. But here he was, jovial and generous with the cash, buying rounds and offering Bradley help on a project he could not possibly know much about.
He was relieved to see Caroline Vega and Jack Cleary come in, and he waved them over.
'I guess you do, Mike. And I've got some friends coming in and we've got some things to talk about.'
Bradley regretted his words before they were out. Now Finnegan would focus all of his ferocious senses on Vega and Cleary, and would come away from this night knowing far more about them than he should. He'd assimilate them, digest them. Add them to his friends list. Like he did everyone else.
'I'm sorry you're angry, Bradley. But remember that Gravas is increasingly irrational.'
'I'll remember that.'
'I might be able to help.'
'See you, Mike.'
'Yes, sir. Owens, hon? We've been foreclosed upon.'
But by the time Erin had announced that the Inmates were taking a short break, and Finnegan had collected his change and stuffed his fat wallet back into his jeans, and Owens had put on her jacket and slung her purse over her shoulder, Caroline and Cleary had arrived.
'Mike, this is Caroline Vega,' Bradley said curtly.
'Hi, Caroline,' said Mike. 'We met at the street festival last year in West Hollywood. You had the LASD booth and the sun in your face and I had the lovely daughter and the great big frozen lemonades.'
'I haven't forgotten you or that lemonade or your daughter, Mike. You're leaving?'
'Just buried in work tonight. And Owens is shooting early tomorrow so I should get her home.'
Owens and Caroline shook hands and Bradley saw them exchange looks of recognition. Bradley had to introduce Jack Cleary also, and, in a pleasant surprise, Cleary and Finnegan had never met. Cleary, large and well muscled, looked down on the little man as if he were something stuck to his shoe.
'Well, carry on, kids,' Mike said with a smile. He clapped Bradley on the shoulder and began to work his way out of the crowded room.
Bradley saw Erin catch up with the little man and say something in his ear. Finnegan bobbed his head and smiled, looking pleased. He kissed Erin's hand in good-bye, which pissed off Bradley. He watched her work her way through the crowd toward him, in a state of wonder, for the millionth time, that Erin McKenna belonged to him and he to her. He stood and wiped off the back of her hand with a drink napkin, then pulled out his chair so she could sit. Late in the show Bradley huddled close with Caroline and Cleary, and told them he had a confession to make. He confessed to believing that there was more to life than risking it by chasing small-time bad guys for not much of a salary and crummy hours. Witness the potato peeler, he said, tapping his sore breast. To address this imbalance in this tough economy, he proposed an arrangement wherein the three of them would target the MS-13 street dealers and enforcers now overrunning L.A. as paid employees of Benjamin Armenta's besieged Gulf Cartel. Cleary, a Narcotics Bureau sergeant, would gradually get Vega and Bradley into his unit and they could work a lot of the busts as a team. Why? Because Armenta and his Mara errand boys were scourges on the city. Because they made Rocky Carrasco's outfit look like Boy Scouts and the city was better off without them. Kidnap Stevie? They're worse than animals, Jones explained. When he was almost done with his pitch, Bradley's heart was pounding and he felt flushed and exposed. He knocked back his drink and stared at them.
Both Vega and Cleary stared back. He sensed that this idea appealed to Vega's young sense of adventure but Cleary looked uninterested.
Bradley heard Erin singing in the background, a ballad she'd written called 'Blue Rodeo,' but not even the pretty melody and high emotions of the lyrics could penetrate the heavy silence at the table. He held the gazes of Cleary and Vega one at a time, back and forth, thinking, Screw you two wimps if you can't see an opportunity and take it.
Then, into the silence scratched only by the music of his wife, Bradley dropped his final bomb:
'Two grand a week for each of you.'
Now he felt not just exposed but utterly naked-stripped down to his bare chassis-no extras, no options.
'Say that again,' said Cleary.
'Please do,' said Caroline.
Bradley said it again. Neither of the other deputies said anything for a long moment. Bradley stared at his wife onstage, ignoring them.
'Two thousand a week? To fuck over the Mara Salvatrucha, Brad? Well, that's pretty much what I do anyway. I'm in.'
'Good, Jack. Good.' Whew. Wow. One down, he thought. 'You, Caroline?'
'Finally, a little something to go with four twelves a week and a skimpy paycheck. I can build on a couple grand a week. I'm way in.'
Bradley looked at each of them in turn and they touched their glasses. He felt as if something had been loosed inside him, a torrent of relief and richness and possibility. He felt as if he were riding a bull, and he was staying on; he was winning.
He went back to watching Erin and the Inmates. Bradley's heart slowed to its usual rate and he felt all of his exposed parts retracting back into the new shell that was now not his alone but comprised of the three of them. The power of three. And another six grand into his own pocket every week. Three hundred twelve thousand a year. Bradley caught their sideways glances over the next hour, but neither Vega nor Cleary asked him the obvious question of who was paying large sums of cash each week to mess with the Maras. They must have figured that Bradley got lucky with Rocky Carrasco's boy, and maybe Rocky and Bradley talked later, and maybe they talked about how the old days were better, before the Gulf Cartel invasion of L.A.
This pleased him, because he wanted his team to be self-starters who could figure the score in their heads without fuss. People who understood the power of silence. People who knew an opportunity when they saw one. And had the drive and the skills to take care of business. It was early morning, nearly four, when Bradley and Erin got home to Valley Center. The drive was long but worth it. The ranch had grown to eighty acres now, and the house had been recently remodeled and the outbuildings updated and Bradley had installed a secret bunker beneath the barn and he was the only one on earth who knew it was there.
Bradley drove onto the property first, winding up the dirt road between the Indian land and punching his gate opener as he watched the headlights of Erin's X5 settle into the dust behind him. Then he drove through a gentle swale and along a fence that blossomed with climbing white roses and he passed the barnyard with the enormous oak tree in its center. The dogs had surrounded him by now, an eclectic pack of purebreds and mongrels led by a
