The Famous and the Dead Read Online Free PDF

the passenger seat, then rolled down the windows and called Yorth. An hour later the four men came out. Castro got into a silver Ford Flex with dealer tags and the three others boarded a red Jeep Commander with Missouri plates. Wampler drove. Hood followed them three cars back to the Pueblo Lodge on the east side of town. It was an older motel with freestanding concrete-block casitas painted pumpkin orange and a sign out front with an arrow that lit up one bulb at a time, drawing customers in. The Commander swung in beside a white F-150, raised with big tires. Hood continued past the entrance and headed for home.

4
    A waiting his grand inquisitor, Deputy Bradley Jones slouched in a conference room chair, legs crossed and boots on the table beside his hat, rounding off his snagged left thumbnail with a pocketknife. He was twenty-two years old, clean-cut and good looking, a second-year patrolman. He had been a rising star with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department but was now a falling one, suspected of involvement in the L.A. drug trade, and more. By all signs that he could gather, LASD was going to eat him alive and enjoy doing it.
    Lieutenant Jim Warren, Internal Criminal Investigations Bureau, came through the door, set a laptop on the table, and sat across from the young deputy. He wore pressed jeans and black wingtips and a crisp white shirt. His face was craggy and brown and his hair was a gray buzz cut. Bradley knew that the feared Warren came from a checkered background: Decades ago he had founded the Renegades, a gang of mostly white deputies, some of whom did some bad things to people of color. Warren had turned them over to Internal Affairs, but caught the brunt of the backlash and the hostility of his own department. Years later he became an IA crusader, and Bradley figured it was his atonement. Bradley put him at seventy if a day and wondered why he hadn’t retired over a decade ago as most cops would have. How much did atonement did Warren need?
    â€œFeet on the floor, son.”
    â€œSir.”
    Bradley put his feet down and Jim Warren squared the laptop and opened it. “Tell me about Carlos Herredia.”
    â€œNot again.”
    â€œWhy not again?”
    â€œYou think if you make me repeat myself enough times I’ll finally say what you want to hear.”
    â€œJust once more, Bradley. I’ll listen better this time.”
    Bradley spun through Carlos Herredia’s well-known bio: nicknamed El Tigre, head of the North Baja Cartel, fingers deep in L.A. drug distribution through Eme and the Florencia gangsters. Mota, junk, meth, coke, murder, kidnapping, extortion.
    â€œAnd enemy of the Gulf Cartel,” said Warren. “Don’t forget that.”
    â€œWhat’s left of the Gulf Cartel. I’ll tell you this one more time—I’ve never favored Herredia’s cutthroats in L.A. over the Gulf’s cutthroats in L.A. The way I do things here is simple, sir: A gangsta is a creep is a punk is a dirtball. They’re all the same. So I don’t play favorites on patrol. And I resent you self-righteous dinosaurs making me out to be a bad guy. Of course I don’t mean you, personally, Lieutenant Warren. Personally, I respect and like you.”
    â€œMy lucky day.”
    Bradley folded the blade down and slipped the knife back into his pocket. He gave Warren a flat glance then focused on the repaired thumbnail.
    â€œI’ve got sworn testimony against you, Brad. Octavio Leyal knows Herredia’s organization from the inside. He says Herredia pays you to leave his L.A. distributors alone and focus on the Maras and Eighteenth Street, who are teamed up with the Gulf. He says you’re a courier for the cash runs south, taking Herredia’s money back to him. He says he’s seen you in Baja, at one of Herredia’s compounds known as El Dorado. Quite a place, according to Leyal.”
    â€œI know, sir. But Leyal is a low-level criminal and a