“Charlie Hood. I’m young, like you, and we need to help each other because we’re the future. At least that’s what they say.”
Franks went quiet for a long moment. “I’m sixty-four years old. Give me your numbers.”
14
A few minutes later Hood parked off the Pearblossom Highway where Laws and Draper had battled Shay Eichrodt beside the ruins of the Llano del Rio utopia. The stone columns of the old assembly hall rose from the hard ground. The highway was bleached pale gray by the sun and there was a raven blown by the wind onto the nearest Joshua tree, outstretched wings and body crucified on the long spines.
He walked the area where Eichrodt’s truck had been pulled over. Big rigs thundered down the highway and he could feel their vibrations in his chest. Hood sat on an old river-rock wall and read Laws’s arrest report. Laws wrote in the plodding, jargon-heavy style of most cops:
…at approx. 4:20 a.m. we observed a pickup truck, red, with plate numbers partially matching…the apparently unconscious suspect then suddenly extended one leg, which caused me to lose balance and fall…the suspect appeared to be under the influence of a stimulant…the suspect was eventually subdued…
Hood imagined the bloody fight between two strong men with batons, and one huge and very strong man who had just taken two lives, jacked up on crystal meth and fighting for his own.
After reading the report, he wondered if that brutal fight had taken something out of Terry Laws, the thing that Carla Vise said had vanished and never returned, even after the stitches were removed and the bruises healed.
Hood left the murder book on the wall and walked among the Llano del Rio ruins. He’d read about this socialist utopia in school. He had always liked stories that began with good intentions, then became complicated. The utopia was founded in 1914 and it survived three years. There were pear orchards and alfalfa fields and a modern dairy—all made possible by a clever irrigation system that distributed water from the snow-fed Llano del Rio. The utopians grew 90 percent of the food they needed. There were workshops for canning fruit, cobbling shoes, cleaning clothes and cutting hair. A Montessori school sprouted up, Southern California’s first. All this was done by cooperation—no one made money. Detailed drawings for the Llano of the future depicted a city of ten thousand people living in craftsman-style apartments with shared laundry and kitchen facilities, surrounded by a road that would double as a drag strip for car races. There would even be grandstands for viewing. Being a car guy, Hood had always liked the racing idea. He wondered what Ariel Reed would think of it. But Llano lost its credit and water rights, and its leaders began to fight. They got no help from powerful Angelenos made uneasy by Llano’s goofy success. Hood looked at it now: no sign or historical marker, just a ruin that the desert bums and migrant workers sometimes used for a temporary shelter in this relentlessly hostile desert.
Looking at these ruins, Hood thought about the utopian ideals of shared labor and shared prosperity. He thought about Terry Laws using the ideals of charity to feather his own impressive nest. The settlers of Llano were partially done in by their own squabbling and the distrust of others. Terry Laws was done in by a man with a machine gun who wanted something that Terry had.
But before that, something good in him had already died—just as Carla Vise had observed.
Hood wondered if it wasn’t the arrest at all, but something else that had changed Terry Laws forever. Something he did. Something Mr. Wonderful couldn’t live with. Something that earned him seven to eight grand a month and cost him his soul.
ON HIS WAY BACK to the prison, Hood called an acquaintance in narco and asked him why some drug money was weighed, pressed and stacked, and some wasn’t.
“Transport,” he said. “Big cash takes too much time to count and too much space to pack, so they weigh and press it.” His name was Askew and he’d worked narcotics for his entire career, starting as a baby-faced twenty-two-year-old posing undercover as a high school student/dealer.
“The big dollars go to Mexico,” he said. “Before 9/11 they’d fly it across from Phoenix or San Diego or L.A. After that, airline security got a lot tougher, so now they just drive it in. About a million dollars a day—three hundred and fifty sweet million a year. U.S. Customs intercepts maybe two percent of it. Mexican Customs welcomes it. Even the Colombian money goes through Mexico.”
“What’s big enough for a run south?”
“Who knows? Say a hundred grand.”
“What about seventy-two hundred?”
He laughed. “No.”
“How often?”
“Different cartels, different schedules, different routes. They have to change things up. But at least once a week. Couriers make good money but the price of being late or short is extremely high. You know—wives, children, that kind of high.”
“North Baja Cartel,” said Hood. “What’s an average weekly run?”
“Oh, big stuff. Three, maybe four hundred grand. Since the Arellanos, it’s been Herredia all the way. Are you looking at Vasquez and Lopes?”
“The book’s on the seat beside me.”
“Why?”
“Let’s come back to that,” Hood said.
“Don’t tell me you have problems with Eichrodt.”
Hood thought about that a moment. “I’m starting to.”
“You know why? Because he wasn’t enough. Tweaker, loser. Vasquez and Lopes were pros. They knew what they were doing. They should have made short work of Shay Eichrodt.”
“Talk to me, Lieutenant,” said Hood.
“I think they were starting a run that night. The evidence was there—they were high on amphetamines for the drive. They were armed. They’d hidden cash—weighed and pressed—in suitcases full of clothes. They had a full tank of gas and they were heading south. None of this mattered to the DA, who got fingerprints, blood, stolen cash, and an Aryan Brother with the murder gun. Pretty good chance that Eichrodt did the shooting, but I don’t think he was alone. I didn’t make any waves. I’m narco, you know? Let the Bulldogs and the lawyers do their thing. But if I’m right, you’ve got an accomplice and three hundred something grand unaccounted for. Maybe less; maybe more. What’s your interest, Charlie? Your turn to make nice.”
“Laws busted Eichrodt. I’m looking for enemies.”
Hood didn’t say that he’d also been looking for a way that Terry Laws could have gotten his hands on a few hundred grand, and had just found one.
He got an idea.
BACK IN THE HOLE, Hood turned on the lights. In the cold cubicle he put one stack of Terry Laws’s time cards on his desk, and another on the desk that Warren had used. The stack on Hood’s desk were pre-arrest and the cards on Warren’s desk were post-arrest.
Hood examined Terry’s pre-arrest time cards and looked for patterns. He looked for anomalies. He saw his breath condense.
He found nothing.
But at Warren’s desk now, looking through the post-arrest time cards, Hood found a pattern: Terry had not worked a Friday in twenty straight months.
Hood remembered that Terry always made his Build a Dream contributions on Mondays unless the bank was closed.
Fridays, Terry had all day to work a second job, thought Hood. Three days later, he deposited his earnings from it.
AFTER WORK HOOD drove to a Museum Store in an L.A. mall and found what he had seen there last holiday season, a giant-sized plastic H2O molecule. It sat on a stand that housed two AAA batteries and when you turned it on, the hydrogen and oxygen atoms careened through clear plastic tubing and changed colors. It was recommended for ages seven and up. Hood bought it and some batteries and had them wrapped. He also bought a card with a close-up picture of a Ferrari grille, and wrote in it: A week from Saturday is a long way off. Will it get here quicker if I drive fast? CH.
Ariel wasn’t in her office but Hood and his sheriff’s badge convinced the lobby guard to deliver it upstairs to her.
He drove L.A. for a few hours before heading home.
15
The late dinner arrives and we eat in silence. I can tell that the boy is trying to process my story without seeming to. More than that, he’s trying to process me. But you know how important it is for the young to be cool. I order another round of drinks. He’s plenty high by now and working hard not to show it. He downs the miso soup, eats his way through ten slabs of wild-caught salmon, downs a bowl of rice drenched in soy sauce. Nothing left on his plate, so he relights his second cigar.
“So, Laws and I have a nice arrangement,” I say. “We’re talking roughly seven grand a week each. We drive a few hours to get what we need. We weigh and package it. We drive a few more hours to deliver it. Then we party down with Herredia. Months go by, but trouble is coming. Trouble always comes. Something is going wrong with Terry. The Mexicans have a word for it, gusano, which means worm, but it also means something inside a person that is eating them. So, what is it? What’s eating him?”
I look at the boy and he’s studying me hard. He puffs the cigar and blows out the smoke but I can tell his full attention is on me and the question before him.
“I can’t know,” he says. “Because you’ve left something out of the story. You haven’t given me all the information.”
“What have I left out?”
“Things don’t add up with your story about the couriers and Eichrodt. How can a stoned tweaker execute two veteranos, two tough-ass cartel runners? I don’t see why the couriers pulled over that night and parked on the off-ramp. They were right out in the open. Where were their guns? How could Eichrodt possibly disguise himself as anything but a three-hundred-pound man? Did they know him? The papers never said that. And something else that bothers me—how did you and Laws get so lucky that night? How did you find the van and the truck so easily? How come some other unit didn’t find at least one of them before you did? And also, why didn’t you call for backup when you pulled over Eichrodt? He was cooperative. That doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. And also, what about this tipster? How come he sees everything and calls it all in, but won’t give his name? That’s very convenient. I don’t trust him. I think he’s involved in a big way.”
“You think like a cop.”
“It’s just common sense.”
I understand that I’ve come to a crossroads. I’ve only met with this boy a few times over a few weeks, but we’ve already arrived at a moment of truth. Only truth can support the great weight of the future.
As I said before, I almost believe in him. I think he has what I’m looking for. One man can accomplish much, but two men? Then three, then more? The sky is the limit. It takes a team. There were some forward-thinking deputies at my department back in the eighties. They gave themselves names and they got respect. There were the Renegades and the Vikings and the Saxons and the Reapers. They understood the power of working together. I’ve never met one of them. But I can tell you that they had the right idea.
I lean in close and lower my voice.
“Actually, when we first see the van, it’s headed southbound on Highway Fourteen near Avenue M. We flash it. At this point, Lopes and Vasquez are very much alive and well.”
He looks at me with an expression I’ve never seen on him. Time passes before he speaks. “Oh, man.”
“Oh, man is right, son. Do you want me to go on? You can say no but it has to be now. In life there are no retractions and in this story there will be none either. Once it is told, it is told.”
“Yes. Go on.”
“You’re sure? I’m offering you a way out.”
“I need to know.”
“You cannot unhear.”
“I want to hear.”
I lean in close and I whisper. “Good. Terry goes to the driver’s side and I take the passenger side. The couriers roll down their windows. We talk. They’re eating strawberries out of a basket on the console between them. In the back of the van there are shapes covered by blankets. Flats of strawberries holding them down. We know what is under those blankets. I shoot Vasquez. Terry is supposed to shoot Lopes but Terry can’t pull the trigger. So I do. I give them both the new look. We take the money. I can’t explain to you the thrill of killing two criminals and driving away in a law enforcement vehicle with their money in the trunk. It’s the essence of life as I know it. I call in the tip and we arrange some things for evidence. Then we drive out Pearblossom Highway and wait for Shay Eichrodt to come home from the bars.”
He can’t hide the shock. He also looks disappointed, confused and afraid. It’s a storm of emotions and I can read every one of them. He looks as if he’s witnessed something that has changed his life.
Which, of course, he has.
His face looks older now. He can’t see it but I can. “So,” he says.
“So.”
“Really.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what to think or say.”
“It’s been thought and said before.”
“Except that I…face a similar situation.”
“Of course you do.”
“Where I will have to decide.”
“Yes. And I want to hear all about it. It’s a complex circumstance. There is little simplicity in any life worth living.”
There’s a long silence while we vet each other’s confession.
“Why did you tell me?” he asks.
“I chose you. And you needed to know what’s required. It’s the difference between being a boy and being a man. Do you want to hear the rest of the story? There’s so much more to tell.”
“But why did you choose me?”
“Because of who you are.”
He sits back and sips his beer. “I want to hear more.”
16
The next morning Draper ran north on Laguna’s Main Beach with Juliet beside him. The winter sky was gray, and out by Rockpile he saw a pelican tuck its wings and drop into the green wind-chopped water. A moment later the bird bobbed to the surface and raised its head and a fish tail disappeared down its beak. The waves were small and orderly.
Juliet was older than him by two years, thirty-one, but she had no trouble keeping up with him. He pulled up closer to her and she looked at him flatly, as if he were either a slight annoyance or of minor interest—he couldn’t guess which. All he knew for sure was that he was both the personification of, and a remedy for, Juliet’s self-loathing.
She was brown-skinned and brown-eyed and her body was strong and smooth. Her hair was blond and she wore it with impudent unstyle. Her smile was rare and subtle. She was beautiful. Draper had been with her for a year, and before that with two other women in Laguna very much like her, ever since he came north from Jacumba ten years earlier. To Draper she was a type easily attracted to pretty, forgiving little beach towns—women of great outward beauty and physical health that disguised serious inner damage.
“It’s nice to be home with you,” he said. “It makes my heart glad.”
She ignored him.
They ran up the ramp to Heisler Park and Draper saw that the rosebushes were beginning to bud out. Then up Cliff to Coast Highway north, across at Crescent, down PCH past the galleries and across again to Main Beach and all the way down to Juliet’s place at the Royale.
Draper opened the door and stepped inside. Her condo had a big picture window that looked out at black rock formations and the cold green ocean journeying far to meet the sky. They had furnished it beautifully. There was still a fire going against the morning chill. They made love in the shower and Juliet scratched his thigh hard enough to draw blood. Later she made a show of cleaning the scratch and putting on a dressing, then they dozed on a blanket in front of the fire. Later they went out to lunch and sat by the fire there, too. They sat close and spoke in near whispers, their heads touching lightly. Draper loved the smell of her hair.
“How’s work?” he asked.
“It’s work.”
She was a hostess in one of Laguna’s good restaurants, which kept her busy three nights a week and brough
t in enough money for clothes and cosmetics. She also worked part-time at the Laguna Club, a day-care center, because she liked children, and volunteered part-time at the animal shelter because she liked dogs.
“Everything went well,” he said.
“You know that means nothing to me. You’ve made it mean nothing to me.”
“It was my only condition.”
“I’m thinking about Aspen.”
“I can tell.”
“I feel as if I’m a shadow here. I have no face. I think I need a change of scenery.”
Aspen, thought Draper. She wouldn’t last a week of winter.
“Get me another lemon drop,” she said.
Draper ordered another drink for each of them and they ate lunch and watched the people on the sidewalk and the eucalyptus trees shimmering outside city hall.
“It didn’t work, Coleman.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“I don’t see why it doesn’t work.”
“It will, Juliet.”
“I’m tired of it not.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
“Maybe another doctor. I have a name.”
“Here, I brought this for you,” he said.
Draper pulled the lab report from his jacket pocket. “This says that I’m a fertile little mongrel.”
She took the slip, looked at the checked boxes and the numbers, handed it back. “But I’ve done my part, too, Cole.”
“They said patience. When everything is right, it happens.”
“Three months and nothing.”
“It’s going to happen for us.”
“If it’s me, we can use another woman’s,” she said.
“It isn’t you,” he said. “I want it to be ours.”
Draper was functionally sterile. It was a rare condition that he had been born with. But he knew how much she wanted his child, so he’d created the favorable lab report for her, based on forms he found online, checking the right boxes and filling in hormone levels and sperm count based on Wikipedia information, signing a doctor’s name with convincing haste and sloppiness. He wanted no more children to provide for—Brittany was enough—but he wanted Juliet to be happy.
The Renegades Page 10
