four men inside just barely visible behind the smoked windows. Bradley noted the California plates and the BAJA JOE'S decal on the back bumper, just over the trailer hitch. Just as Gravas had done, the Denali crossed the station and exited on the boulevard, only to reappear a few minutes later.
But instead of heading for the darkened back portion of the lot where Gravas now waited, the Denali proceeded to the car-wash entry, where the attendant stepped aside and waved it into the wash. Suddenly the Mercury reversed in a nifty highway-patrol turn and shot forward to the car-wash entry and followed the Denali inside.
Not bad, thought Bradley-a little cave of privacy in the middle of this public place. They could transfer the guns and weigh out the money in less than five minutes, while the 'attendant' kept any innocent bystanders from joining the party.
He saw Dez get into her Corvette and pull toward the car-wash entry. The attendant waved his arms and shook his head and Dez began arguing with him. She got out and left her lights aimed into the car-wash tunnel and she must have called in the cavalry, too, because as Bradley watched, the two undercover deputies in the mini-mart and the couple polishing up their 500 and the two more UC men gassing the pickup truck all drew their weapons and broke for the car wash.
Bradley felt an incredible surge of adrenaline hit him. There's nothing like this feeling, he thought, and no worse torture than having to sit here and just watch.
Dez waited for the first two deputies to reach her and together they charged into the wash, guns up. Bradley heard one of them yelling at Gravas to Get down, get down, this is L.A. County Sheriffs and you are under arrest! Two more plainclothes charged into the entrance, one brandishing a gun in one hand and a video recorder in the other. The last two ran around to cover the exit. A dog began barking inside.
Everyone down! Everyone DOWN!
The first four gunshots rang from inside the tunnel in amplified roars. A woman screamed but another volley of gunfire drowned her out. Curses in Spanish, a man screaming with pain. Then the strange rapid sound of metal being pierced but no sound of gunfire and Bradley knew that Gravas had unleashed a silenced Love 32. Bullets whined and shrieked in ricochet, some of them finding the exits and howling off into the night. One of the plainclothes men staggered out of the entrance and collapsed. The car-wash attendant ran across the avenue. The dog barked faster.
Gravas, down!
Then another long, pounding volley of handgun fire, each blast echoing sharply in the tunnel, and Bradley Jones could control himself no longer.
He ran toward the car-wash exit. He had just rounded the building when the Denali headlights came on and the big vehicle jumped toward him and Bradley saw Gravas and his dog bearing down on him. Bradley raised his gun but even then he saw he was too late. Gravas reached through the driver's side window with a big tattooed arm and a gleaming machine pistol and sent a silent burst of fire into Bradley's chest. The fusillade knocked him over to the slick concrete and the Denali would have crushed him if Bradley hadn't rolled over and out of the way, the tires squealing past his ear. By the time he got up and into shooting position the Denali was well into the boulevard traffic and there was no shot he could safely take. He dropped his gun and curled into himself and felt the wild pain in his torso and ran his hands across his chest. But nothing liquid, nothing warm. Deputies ran past him for the avenue and he looked up to see Dez's red Corvette scream off in pursuit.
Finally he rose to his knees and looked down at his shirt. No blood. He felt through the tattered Nat Nast shirt and looked at his fingers and there was no blood on them, either.
He picked up his gun and stood and stepped into the car wash. In the semidarkness he could see the big rubber roof brushes tucked up against the ceiling and the side brushes waiting on their assemblies and the six bodies heaped on the slick concrete floor like old rags. Herredia's couriers, he saw, and two of the undercover deputies-the man and woman who had been detailing their beloved Ford. One of the couriers groaned and Bradley walked over to him on wobbly legs. The man stared up at him while his hand walked a few inches across the wet car-wash floor in search of his weapon.
'We're fools,' said Bradley, kicking away the gun.
He staggered outside and leaned against the wall and watched as three LASD radio cars flew into the gas station from three different entrances, followed by the paramedics and two more plainwraps. Traffic was heavy and stalled with spectators, most of them out of their cars with their cell cameras pointed toward the wash. The helo hovered overhead. He stuck his gun in his waistband and walked not slowly and not quickly to his car and got into it and drove away in the opposite direction that Gravas had gone.
He made West Hollywood in less than an hour. On a darkened side street near the Troubadour he stepped from the Cayenne and stripped off his suede vest and shirt, then painfully wriggled out of a heavy steel mesh vest concealed beneath his shirt. The vest had been a wedding gift. The accompanying card was signed, 'Your Mother.' Bradley had found the joke infuriating but intriguing, given that she was a year dead on his wedding day. According to the jokester, the vest had been custom-forged by a Bakersfield blacksmith of French descent for Joaquin Murrieta, his great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, in 1851.
He opened the hatchback and heaved the vest in. In the vehicle's interior light he could see the buttons that ran down one side of the vest-silver 1851 eight-reales coins, drilled on-center and attached to the mail with leather ties. And he could see the old marks and dings and dimples that the vest and someone-El Famoso? — had endured. Bradley looked at the newer dings and divots that had just been added by Sean Gravas and his Love 32. These had a different patina-smoother, cleaner and deeper than those that his great ancestor had survived-and Bradley knew that his luck was holding, that if he'd been shot with a high-caliber handgun or a magnum load, he would be lying back in that car wash with the rest of the luckless dead.
He lifted his undershirt and looked down at his chest. The welts were raised and red with white tops and painful as burns but the skin was unbroken. It looked like he'd been stung by hornets. He got back into the bullet- shredded shirt, then found the old denim jacket he always carried in his vehicle and bundled up against the sudden cold.
He walked around the block, stopped at a liquor store and bought a pack of smokes and a bouquet of flowers. He stood outside the Troubadour and lit up and waited for his body to stop trembling and his breathing to slow. It took a while. When he was ready he stepped inside, where the doorman recognized him and gave him a brief nod of acceptance.
35
Ozburn dropped the last of the nine wooden gun boxes into the trunk of the Corolla, then set his duffel over them, grabbed both Love 32s and closed the lid.
He got into the passenger seat and set the guns on the floor and Daisy licked the back of his neck as he cinched up the restraints. Father Joe signaled and looked over his shoulder before slowly pulling onto Floral Street.
'Pick up the pace a little, Padre,' said Ozburn. 'You don't want to get pulled over for going too slow.'
Leftwich smiled and goosed the accelerator and the little four-cylinder hummed obligingly.
'I take it there was a problem,' said the priest. He was dressed in his clerical uniform again-black shirt with a stiff white collar, black pants.
'Five men and a woman down and probably dead. I think I killed three of the men and maybe a fourth on the way out. There were so many people and so much shooting, I could hardly tell what was going on.'
'But there was no killing in the plan, was there?' Leftwich handed Ozburn his ancient flask and Ozburn took a big drink.
'Just a straight-up, money-for-guns buy. I don't know what happened. Four of Herredia's errand boys had the guns. The others screamed they were deputies but by then they were shooting at me. Anybody can yell cop. Gulf Cartel gunmen came to mind. But two were women so I'm thinking LASD. Seven in all. Fuckin' chaos, Father. When I saw them coming at me from both ends of that tunnel I just did what I had to do. Thanks for being here.'
'I told you I'd be here.'
Ozburn hit the flask again and gave it back. Leftwich signaled and turned onto Avenue L and accelerated
