The Renegades: A Charlie Hood Novel

by T. Jefferson Parker

  All of this driving had started six months ago, on the night that Allison Murrieta had died. Later that night, he had felt something inside him escape. It felt physical, not spiritual or sentimental, but a tactile object taking leave of its place, like a leaf detaching from a tree or a bird flying off a branch. He had weighed himself and found he’d lost a pound and a half according to his bathroom scale. Then he went for a drive, trying to figure out what it was that had left him, and that drive had never really ended.

  Hood stopped at the Voodoo up on Sunset because Erin McKenna was set to perform with her band, the Cheater Slicks. It was nice seeing her name on the marquee. She played guitar and keyboards and sang and wrote the songs. She was an acquaintance of Hood’s, but mainly he wanted to see her boyfriend, Bradley Jones. Jones was seventeen and headed for trouble and proud of it. Erin was nineteen. They were in love. Hood thought of them as children. And he thought he should help them with their lives because Allison Murrieta had been Bradley Jones’s mother.

  The Voodoo was dark and muffled, the walls tacked with black carpet, the acoustics good. Hood entered the percussive darkness. Erin was onstage with her band, skin pale, eyes blue, and her straight red hair shining in the overhead floods. She was startlingly beautiful and her voice was strong but delicate, like glass.

  Hood saw that Bradley had a table off to the side, with his usual gang of two. The two men were older than Bradley, but Hood knew that Bradley led the gang because he had the brains and the gumption and what LASD Human Resources would call “leadership qualities.” One of the men was a car thief and the other a document forger, and Hood knew that they both had dealt in computer fraud and stolen goods. Both had done time. They were sharp dressers and fast talkers and they attracted desirable, acquisitive women.

  Hood took a stool at the bar. Bradley saw but didn’t acknowledge him. Instead, he signaled the cocktail waitress for three more. Hood knew he had a fake ID, courtesy of one of the creeps at his table, but Hood also knew that Bradley didn’t have to use it very often. He was six feet tall, weighed probably one-eighty, wore his hair long and a neatly trimmed goatee, like Robin Hood or a poet. He loved clothes and wore them well. Allison had adored Bradley and he had adored her back. Hood understood that Bradley would never fully forgive him for being with Bradley’s mother in the days before she died. Things could have unfolded differently, and Hood believed that he owed the boy something.

  Hood got a beer and swiveled on his bar stool and watched Erin sing an X cover. Bradley stared at him from across the room. Months ago Hood had seen that there was something genuinely wild in Bradley, something not always controlled. He was emotional and reckless and occasionally violent. Like his mother.

  When the song was over, Erin looked out and smiled at Hood, then Bradley ambled over and took a stool beside him.

  “The long arm of the law,” he said.

  “She sounds great tonight.”

  “She sounds great every night. They charge cops extra to get in?”

  “Watch it or I’ll tell them you’re still a child. How’s tricks, Bradley?”

  “Fifteen units, all A’s and B’s. Solid units. No wood shop. No auto shop. No criminal psychology or whatever it was that you studied.”

  Erin moved to the piano and the Cheaters started in on one of her songs that Hood had heard before. It was about a junkie walking on the water at Malibu and Hood thought it was funny and haunting.

  Allison had told Hood that Bradley had a high IQ. His arrogance was high also. Hood knew that last year, as a high school junior down in Valley Center, Bradley had played varsity football, starting both ways, and maintained a 4.25 GPA by not studying and by cutting class often. When his mother died he left Valley Center and came to L.A. Two months ago he told Hood that he’d quit high school and enrolled at Cal State L.A., taking five solids, and joined the football team for off-season workouts.

  “Funny,” Hood said. “Because Cal State L.A. told me there was no Bradley Jones enrolled there.”

  “Long Beach, Hood. I transferred.”

  “I talked to Long Beach, too. And eleven other colleges and junior colleges. You don’t attend any of them, in case you were wondering.”

  “Buy you a beer?”

  “I’ll buy my own.”

  Bradley motioned to the bartender and two beers arrived, lime wedges on the side. “I’m taking some time off from school, Hood. But I’ve got a job at the hapkido studio where Mom used to work out. I’m a first dan black belt, so I drill the kids and keep the books and answer the phone.”

  “Okay.”

  “What do you mean, okay?”

  “You can submit that Sheriff’s Department application when you’re nineteen and a half. That gives you two years to get some college. Don’t waste them.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  “Sheriff’s is a good gig. You’d start at forty-nine a year once you’re sworn. With your grades and sports, and a letter from me—”

  “You’ve told me a million times.”

  “I’m trying to keep your bratty white ass out of trouble.”

  “I don’t want your help. I’m cool. Kick is cool.”

  What Bradley meant by this, Hood knew, was that he had not yet killed the boy who killed his mother. He had told Hood that someday, he would. The shooter’s name was Deon Miller and his street name was Kick. He was a sixteen-year-old Southside Compton Crip when he shot Allison during an armed robbery last year.

  A few weeks later Bradley told Hood he was going to kill Kick. Hood believed him. The look on his face and the tone of his voice were unmistakable and true.

  So Hood had come to see Bradley as a rope: vengeance pulling him one way, and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department—Deputy Charles Robert Hood—pulling him the other.

  “And Kick is cool?”

  Bradley looked at him, then shrugged and squeezed the lime into his beer. “When Kick stops kicking, you’ll know.”

  “Don’t do it. I understand why you want to, but don’t.”

  “You cannot and do not understand.”

  “I loved her, too.”

  “You didn’t even deserve to touch her.”

  “Maybe that’s true but if you kill Kick it’s going to change you and everything about your life.”

  “Exactly.”

  After the song the Cheater Slicks took a break and Erin came over. Bradley gave her his stool, then walked back to his table without a word to her or Hood.

  “He’s chipper tonight,” she said.

  “You sound terrific. I love that walk on water song.”

  “Thanks. I quit smoking. Kinda worried it would wreck my voice but so far so good.”

  “You okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Hood nodded toward Bradley.

  “He hasn’t said a word about Kick lately. That worries me. Usually, you know, he’s always mumbling something or other about what he has to do.”

  “Has to do.”

  “Yeah, has to. I’m surprised he’s contained it as well as he has.”

  “The college thing was all bullshit.”

  “I told him he wouldn’t fool you. He’s looking over here. He’s got the look. I should go.”

  Hood listened to the whole next set. Bradley didn’t look his way again. Two beautifully dressed women joined Bradley and his friends at their table.

  Hood drove L.A. for a couple of hours, then home to Silver Lake. It was almost two a.m. His apartment was cold. He didn’t sleep well but he looked forward to the drive back up to Lancaster the next day for eight more hours of patrol through Antelope Valley.

  11

  The first Friday night after the death of Terry Laws, Draper went alone to collect Herredia’s money. He felt conspicuous and friendless and reminded himself not to let it show. He also reminded himself that without Terry, he would now be taking home twice the pay.

  As he drove through Cudahy, Draper wondered again if Terry had told Laurel what they had done, an
d what they were doing. Or maybe some part of it. Terry had always denied having said anything to his wife, but this question was an itch that Draper couldn’t scratch. It angered him that he couldn’t put it to rest, deal with it effectively like he dealt with everything else. But now, heading into the dark labyrinth of Hector Avalos, he felt even more anxious. Certainly Laurel had talked to Hood by now. And yet, Hood hadn’t come back to him with more questions about Terry—so maybe Laurel had no idea what her husband was doing.

  It was okay.

  It was going to be okay.

  Draper was dressed in street clothes and beside him on the seat of the Cayenne was his leather briefcase.

  As usual, Hector Avalos’s gunmen watched him drive down the Cudahy side street. As usual, more pistoleros stoically escorted his car down the alley and through a vehicle port and into the warehouse. When he was inside, they watched him get out of the car before leaving him alone to navigate the maze of darkened rooms and hallways that formed the south end of the big building.

  At the final door, in what had become a Friday night ritual, Draper knocked fists with Rocky, Hector’s number two man and his most trusted bodyguard. They talked for a minute in the Spanglish they were both comfortable with. Rocky was a small knot of muscle with a web of tattoos that started on the back of his head and spread across his back and shoulders and down his arms. Rocky knew some of the ’manos that Draper had grown up with in Jacumba, clever desert drug runners who could evade law enforcement by using the vast network of dirt roads and caves and tunnels and hidden bridges that surrounded Jacumba on both sides of the border. They talked a moment about what had happened to Terry Laws. A look passed between them that was hard and silent and mutual, then they knocked fists again. Draper rapped sharply three times on the door, waited a beat, then knocked two more.

  “I hear the secret knock,” he heard Avalos holler. “Enter. Enter!”

  Draper pushed through the heavy metal door and into Avalos’s dogfighting arena.

  It was a big room with high ceilings and exposed girders and beams. Now it was only partially lit. Built onto one wall was an elevated “luxury” box with sliding glass doors through which to view the action. Draper could see Hector sitting inside where he always sat, watching TV. Camilla, his wife, sat next to him. Light from the TV played off the glass in arrhythmic flashes.

  Draper waved and headed toward the stairs that led up to the box. He could smell the spilled alcohol and the bleach used to clean the floor of the pit when the fights were over.

  Draper entered the box, shook Hector’s hand, and nodded to Camilla. The couple sat on a red leather couch that faced the fighting pit. The television was on the floor. There was a bar in the rear of the box, a refrigerator, a privacy screen and a bed. There were two recliners, also facing the pit, and half a dozen extra bar stools that could be brought up close to the sliding glass doors for unfettered viewing of the action below. Four large rolling suitcases stood along the glass, handles up and ready to go. Draper sat in a lumpy plaid rocking chair across the coffee table from Hector and Camilla and set the briefcase on the floor beside him.

  Avalos was big and bald and clean shaven except for a great bushy mustache that he grew long. He looked Confucian. Beneath his eyes were five small tattooed teardrops—each one representing a murder he’d committed. He wore a crisp Pendleton. He had a cheerless face and his eyes were dark and calculating. He was drinking gin and tamarindo from a big red plastic tumbler.

  Camilla was a nalgona—a big-butted woman—and strong, her long black hair curled into ringlets that bounced like tree-bound snakes. Her face was pale and her lips were black. She sat on the sofa beside her husband, one hand resting high on his thigh.

  “What happened to Terry?” asked Avalos. “The newspapers don’t have nothing.”

  “A Blood gunned him down.”

  “While he was working, man? In his uniform and they do that?”

  “That’s what happened.”

  “That’s like TJ, man, like TJ.”

  “It was Lancaster.”

  “But you weren’t there.”

  “I was off that night.”

  Draper saw the implication and ignored it. Avalos was a world-class suspecter of people, borderline if not clinically paranoid.

  “Terrible, man, terrible,” said Avalos. He took a long draw of the gin. When drunk, Avalos became thoughtful, then inward, then unpredictable. “I lose my friends. You lose your friend. It’s an evil business that we’re in.”

  “Who are you going to share your money with now?” asked Camilla.

  “How about nobody?” asked Draper.

  “El Tigre will force you to have another partner,” said Avalos. “He will tell you who it will be. He can’t put his property in danger, not for you or nobody.”

  “We’ll be talking about that,” said Draper. “How did we do this week?”

  “Yes, yes, very good.”

  As always Avalos offered him a drink, and as always Draper refused it, alluding to the task at hand. Draper took the wad from his jacket pocket and put it on the coffee table in front of Avalos. One thousand dollars—his weekly tribute, payable from the four points he earned the week before. It was this money—and Hector’s unshakable suspicion that his former couriers were cheating him—that had opened the door into the North Baja Cartel for Draper.

  Camilla examined a black fingernail, then set her hand back on Hector’s thigh.

  Draper looked through the sliding glass door. The fight pit stood in the center of the room. It had a concrete floor and walls made of three-quarter-inch plywood panels painted red, yellow or green. It was ringed on three sides by gymnasium bleachers. Long pairs of fluorescent lights hung by chains from the ceiling. There were no windows. Industrial floor fans, turned off now, were stacked behind the bleachers to help cool the blood-thirsty crowds that packed the room once a month.

  “Then I’ll do my job and be going,” said Draper.

  “Yes, yes,” said Avalos. He was an impatient man, who thought that saying things twice, quickly, saved time.

  Draper took his briefcase over and set it on the bar. He brought out the digital scale and set it on the bar top and tapped the ON and RESET buttons. Then he brought over the suitcases two at a time and unzipped them and lifted the stacks of bills and went to the other side of the bar. He worked off the thick rubber bands and began weighing them.

  Camilla sat on a stool and watched. She was drinking through a straw from a large red plastic tumbler like Hector’s and Draper could smell the bourbon wafting out from it. She always wore a different cocktail dress and tonight’s involved claret velvet and black lace. Her perfume was sensual and strong. There was a small CD player on the bar and Camilla put on some corridos—tales of brave and handsome traffickers and the dull-witted police who can never catch them. She hummed along.

  Draper ignored her. He knew she hated being ignored and he truly enjoyed this part of his job. He whistled quietly to himself while he worked and marveled at the simple math that could only have been created by a loving God:

  A pound of fives contained 480 bills worth $2,400.

  A pound of twenties contained 480 bills worth $9,600.

  A pound of hundreds contained 480 bills worth $48,000.

  He weighed each bundle twice but the scale was fast and accurate. A few minutes later, stacked up on the bar and waiting to be photographed, were two pounds of hundreds, six pounds of fifties, twenty pounds of twenties and five pounds of fives.

  Draper didn’t need a calculator to know that he was looking at $444,000, the best week he had ever had. His four points would be $17,760 and it would be in his pocket just a few hours from now. He missed Terry, but what a blessing, not to have to share it. He flipped on the vacuum packer to let it warm up.

  Camilla gave him a frankly craven smile and Draper smiled back.

  “Camilla,” he said. “This reminds me of the time I went to church and the preacher said that God and Jesus want us in hea
ven with them. They want us there. And they always get what they want because they’re God and Jesus, right? I remember thinking: this world is a place of beauty and forgiveness. It made me deeply happy to be alive. Deeply. I feel that way now.”

  “You’re all screwed up, Coleman,” she said. “This is not what Jesus is about.”

  “You both shut up,” said Hector. “What did you get, Draper, what did you get?”

  “Four-forty-four.”

  “Then you make sure it gets to El Dorado, or you get to eat your own cojones for dinner tonight. Okay?”

  “Yes, Hector, I’ve been very clear on that from the beginning. You’re always eager to feed me my own balls.”

  Draper got a small camera from his briefcase and photographed the slabs of cash. He checked the vacuum packer to make sure it was loaded with the continuous-roll bags. Then he went to work. The machine was called the GameSaver Turbo. It could seal fifty bundles without overheating. Draper loved the machine, the efficiency of it, the eagerness with which it packaged his bills.

  When he was done he packed them into the four suitcases and threw in the cheap thrift-store rags to realistically fill out the luggage.

  “You tell Carlos business is good,” said Camilla.

  “I won’t have to.”

  “Do his women still entertain you?”

  “They’re good women.”

  “They’re whores.”

  Hector and Camilla and Rocky helped him get the luggage down to the Cayenne.

  “You always have different cars,” Hector said.

  “I borrow them from friends. I vary them because Customs officials remember cars and plates, but not faces.” And it helped that he could always pluck well-maintained specimens from his Prestige customers, fudging the odometer numbers, no harm done.

  “I didn’t know an honest policeman made so much money,” said Avalos with a smile. “Drive safely. Click it or ticket.”