L. A. Outlaws

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “No, sir.”

  “People need heroes and enemies. So they make them. Look at Allison Murrieta.”

  Wyte went to one of the three black file cabinets along one wall. Hood saw that he moved slowly and unevenly. He pulled open the top drawer of the left-hand cabinet, reached in and removed two thick files.

  He set the files on his desk and sat. “Here’s the last known photograph of your man.”

  Hood looked at the picture. Lupercio Maygar was thirty-eight years old at the time of the picture, about to be discharged from San Quentin State Prison in September of 1998. Lupercio looked like many of the Salvadoran gangsters: compact, fearless, ageless. Even at thirty-eight he looked like he could have been eighteen, or forty-eight, or anything in between. Hood set Jordan’s drawings on either side of the photograph. The flat-top was new. But if you put that haircut on the ten-year-old photo of Lupercio Maygar, you had the same guy.

  “When he got out, his own people turned on him,” said Wyte. “When they couldn’t catch up with him, they killed his wife and his family, sent their heads to him UPS. He vanished, then MS gangsters started dying even faster than usual—seventeen of them in 1999 alone. These weren’t youngsters. They were high-ranking OGs, captains and pistoleros. Lupercio looked good for twelve of them, possibly more, but we never got to warrant because everyone was afraid to talk. They’re still open, all twelve of those murders.”

  “Twelve,” said Hood. He studied the photograph some more. He’d lost faith in numbers in Anbar—the numbers of people killed by soldiers, IEDs and suicide bombers. The numbers of Shiites murdered by Sunnis, and vice versa. There was never agreement. There were U.S. Command numbers, Coalition numbers, UN numbers, Iraqi army and police numbers, American media numbers, BBC numbers, Al Jazeera numbers and of course the numbers muttered in the mosques and marketplaces and alley-ways.

  “Mostly with a machete,” said Wyte. “That’s the village method from Salvador—because a machete is personal and quiet and makes a dramatic statement. There was a truce in late 2000 between Lupercio and Mara Salvatrucha. There was some fond hope he’d gone to Salvador for good. Maybe run into a death squad and tasted a little of his own medicine.”

  “Do we have anything working on him at all?”

  “Just this ancient history. After prison came the murders and the truce, then—he disappeared. Next thing we know, he’s down in Valley Center murdering Native Americans.”

  “It’s tied to Miracle Auto Body,” said Hood. “But I don’t know how. Lupercio was both places—the body shop, then Valley Center.”

  “Lupercio at Miracle? Can you put him there for sure?”

  “Close to for sure. We’ve got a good witness.”

  “The woman from Valley Center,” said Wyte. “This kid’s mother.”

  Lupercio in two bad places, thought Hood. And Suzanne in two bad places, too.

  Wyte leaned back and frowned. “Why would she be at an auto body shop a hundred miles from home?”

  “She was driving by. Heading home after seeing a relative who lives up there. She saw Lupercio pulled over, in his black Lincoln, talking on a cell phone.”

  “The Lincoln,” said Wyte. “I remember it well—always polished and perfect. He drove something else for a few years because he knew we were onto the Lincoln. Now it’s apparently back in action.”

  Hood told Wyte about pulling her over for speeding and hearing her description of Lupercio. He silently cursed himself for failing to get the name and number of Suzanne’s alleged relative that night, then failing to get them again the very next day. Wyte listened, tapping his keyboard. Hood noticed that Wyte’s computer wasn’t a department-issue plastic one like everybody else’s but a brushed aluminum laptop that looked like it could withstand an IED. He remembered hearing that Wyte built his own computers, had built one for the sheriff himself.

  “Then Lupercio must have seen the woman, just like she saw him,” said Wyte. He shook his head slowly, as if only grand stupidity on Suzanne Jones’s part could have allowed this. “And he’s after her because she’s a witness, or he thinks she is. Where is she now?”

  “Her boyfriend isn’t telling.”

  “Forty-eight hours in a holding cell would help.”

  “I don’t think he knows.”

  “Where’s the boyfriend?”

  “Oceanside.”

  Hood wondered again if Suzanne had seen Lupercio doing more than just sitting in his car in the vicinity of Miracle Auto Body. For instance, seen him making off with four hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds that several people knew were about to change hands. That was another pretty good motive for Lupercio to track her down, he thought. But if she’d seen something suspicious that night, why didn’t she tell him? Because she didn’t know what she was looking at? Maybe. Or maybe she knew something about the deal. Or maybe she, too, had been after the diamonds. Hood hadn’t even considered these possibilities until he’d seen Patmore’s video of Allison robbing the Taco Bell in Van Nuys. If Suzanne Jones was Allison Murrieta, things got possible. Strange things. And if she wasn’t Allison, well, then she was just a schoolteacher on her way home from seeing a relative.

  “How did Lupercio find her so fast?” Hood asked.

  “Maybe he followed her home.”

  “No. She lives out in the country. Just a narrow dirt road the last mile to the house. She would have seen him. And he didn’t show up until the next afternoon, dressed as a fisherman and casing her property. If he’d followed her all the way to her house without being seen that night, they’d have found her body instead of the brothers.”

  “I give up.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You shouldn’t. I was young once, too. And hungry.”

  Hood didn’t like that things were fraying: Lupercio seemed to know things he shouldn’t know. Suzanne Jones didn’t look super clean anymore, but she did look like Allison Murrieta. And Allison Murrieta was just brazen enough to think she could lift diamonds from gangsters and live to tell about it, as if the underworld was just another fast-food joint and all she needed to conquer it was an attitude and a gun.

  Hood thought of the way Suzanne Jones allowed him to see her in a nightshirt, and what she’d said about liking him and protecting him, and of the way she’d touched her face to his cheek and drawn breath. She had rattled and skinned him.

  He began to feel the same clench in his stomach that he had lived with day and night on each of his Iraq tours. He could almost taste the antacid he’d swilled for those months—slippery and separated, crusted on the bottle neck and hot to his throat.

  “Where do I find Lupercio?” he asked.

  Wyte nodded toward his office window. “After the murders we looked under every rock in L.A. We never laid eyes on him. I suspect he found a woman to take him in and hide him. I suspect he’s no longer living in this city.”

  “He finds Suzanne Jones easy enough,” said Hood. “Maybe we can use that.”

  “Can you get her to cooperate?”

  “I’m not sure I can get her at all.”

  Hood silently reviewed his clues: a cell phone number she might or might not answer, an empty home, a boyfriend unable or unwilling to give up her whereabouts, a job she wouldn’t need to report to for another few weeks, three callers who had left her messages on the home phone after she’d taken off with her family early that morning.

  “She’ll have to be damned well behaved if we’re going to try that,” said Wyte.

  Hood tried to think it through. He stared across the desk at Wyte and saw some locomotion behind his blue eyes. Wyte was large and well built but somehow unstable at the same time. The helicopter crash had killed the pilot. Wyte’s expression now went optimistic and eager, and Hood wondered if Wyte missed the action.

  “Listen,” said Wyte. “You might have some luck with this. Bait and wait—we did it in gangs all the time. You keep it small. You stay patient. It could work, Hood. Dangle Jones, then wait and watch.�
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  “Like a goat on a stake,” said Hood.

  “But you’d have spotters, listeners, SWAT if you can get them, and someone close to her. You, Hood—you can hold her hand, calm her down.”

  Hood didn’t imagine that.

  “I can help,” said Wyte. “I’ll show you what I know.”

  Hood nodded.

  “But you’ll have to find her first,” said Wyte. “Keep her alive until we can set up. It can take a little time.”

  “I’ll find her.”

  “Let me know when you do. When she’s onboard I’ll talk to Marlon.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wyte sat back. “Hood, if Lupercio saw her at or near Miracle, he’ll kill her. You should be very aware of that. He’s never let people interfere with him. It’s why he’s alive and a dozen men he used to work with aren’t.”

  Hood went out to the lunch truck and got an orange soda and stood in the shade of the headquarters building. His undershirt was stuck to his back and he felt a trickle of sweat behind each ear.

  He called the number Ernest had given him and Suzanne Jones answered on the first ring.

  “It’s Deputy Hood.”

  “Who is that son of a bitch?”

  “Lupercio Maygar. Former Mara Salvatrucha. You’re in danger.”

  Suzanne Jones said nothing for a moment.

  “Where are you?” asked Hood.

  “Laguna.”

  “A public place?”

  “A hotel room.”

  “Can you get to that lifeguard station by the boardwalk without having to drive your car?”

  “I can walk to it.”

  “Meet me there at three. Stay with the beach crowds.”

  “This place is one big crowd.”

  15

  Hood spotted her sitting on a bench near the lifeguard station. She wore a Raiders cap and big reflective sunglasses, and had a pink mesh tote at her feet.

  He was sweltering inside his Target sport coat but it hid his gun. His chinos were a thick winter-weight cotton and his work boots were suede, steel-toed and heavy.

  “You look comfortable,” she said with pleasant sarcasm.

  “It’s the best I do on an average day,” he said.

  They headed north up the boardwalk. The air here in Laguna was cooler than L.A. by twenty degrees and he liked the smell of salt water and sunscreen. The gulls keened and the boom boxes throbbed away down on the beach. The ocean quivered silver and green, and the children screamed and splashed in the small, firm waves.

  “He wants what you have, Ms. Jones.” He watched for her reaction to his suggestive words but saw none.

  “He wants me dead. Because I saw him.”

  “Maybe he’s after something more than your life.”

  “What’s worth more than my life if I’m dead?”

  “Did you see him again that night? Apart from the three times you told me about?”

  She looked at him briefly. “No, I did not.”

  “Did you see him take anything from Miracle Auto Body?”

  “Take? I was never in that place, Hood.”

  “Because if you were and if you saw something you’re not telling me—”

  Suzanne Jones stopped walking and took his arm, turning him to face her. The river of tourists parted around them, and Hood heard Japanese and French and Tagalog trailing past him.

  “I’ve never even seen this body shop,” she said. “And I don’t take things that don’t belong to me. I’m a schoolteacher who saw a man. I didn’t even know about your crime scene until you came to my home on Sunday. Now my neighbors are being murdered and my son is finding butchered bodies in my barn.”

  A kid with a skimboard stared at her big-eyed as he walked past.

  “Let’s find a better place to talk,” said Hood. “Maybe along the water.”

  They stepped off the boardwalk and trudged across the sand toward the ocean. Hood watched the sand flies scatter as he crunched through a patch of seaweed drying in the sun.

  “Give me the name and number of the relative you were visiting when I pulled you over Saturday night. Don’t say it’s none of my business.”

  He punched in the number as they walked. Mary Jones picked up on the third ring and confirmed that her sister-in-law Suzanne had visited her last Saturday night, left around one-thirty in the morning and had not been drinking. Hood thanked her.

  “Alibi confirmed?”

  “Did you coach her?”

  She shook her head and said nothing.

  “You’re telling me the truth, right, Ms. Jones?”

  “You’re the most distrustful man I’ve ever met.”

  He thought of Anbar and the price of trust. “It’s part of the job, Ms. Jones.”

  “I’ve told you nothing but the truth, Charles Robert.”

  “How much of it?”

  “Everything. Christ, you’re difficult.”

  Hood stared down at her as she said this, and he weighed her words and the tone of her words against everything he knew, and he believed them. Unrelated to the fact that she rattled and skinned him, he believed them.

  “Tell Ernest to keep moving,” he said. “One place—one night. No ground-floor rooms. Use public places. The more people around the better.”

  “Okay.”

  “The same goes for you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can offer you protective custody.”

  “You’d have to kill me first.”

  “What I figured. When you left your Valley Center home, did you take your personal phone and address book?”

  “I left it in the computer room.”

  “It’s gone.”

  They looked at each other, midstep. Near the shoreline they continued north. The sand was hard-packed here, and Hood watched the white water chase a sandpiper up the berm. Ahead the tide pools shimmered in the sun and a tall outcropping of black rock stood out against the sky.

  “Lupercio must think you have the diamonds.”

  “I have no diamonds.”

  “Why are you running?”

  “To protect my family. When Jordan drew the picture, I knew that man was after me. Because of the night before. He wasn’t after Harold and Gerald.”

  “He was looking for something in your barn.”

  “Believe me, I know what’s in my barn. I’m sorry my word isn’t good enough for you, Charlie.”

  “Help us set him up,” said Hood.

  She looked up at him. He couldn’t see behind the reflective glasses but her mouth was set firm.

  “Be the bait?” she asked.

  “Yes. Listen.”

  Hood stopped but Jones kept walking, swinging the tote in a carefree arc, then looking back at him. She turned and climbed the rocks then crossed a spit of sand and ducked into an archway and disappeared.

  Hood trotted after her, scrambling up the rocks and across the sand then ducking through the same arch and finding himself in a small enclosure with rock walls and a wet sand floor.

  The white water flooded in and soaked them to their ankles.

  “What would I have to do?” she asked.

  “We’ll want you up our way, for jurisdictional reasons. We’ll pick the place, but you’ll register yourself and pay the charges, just like you did here. We’ll set up outside, in the lobby, in the room next door. We’ll use cameras, mikes, whatever we need. We’d be fluid and lean. The moment he shows, we swarm him.”

  “Who picks up the room charges?”

  “We’re trying to save your life for cryin’ out loud, but we’ll pay for the room, too.”

  “Good. How’s he going to find me?”

  “I don’t know, but I think he will. He’s got help—a network, old gangster friends, maybe a DMV connection. If he found you in Valley Center, we figure he’ll find you again in L.A.”

  She studied him from behind the glasses then sloshed forward through the receding suds and took his face in her hands and kissed him. Hood stared point-blank at h
er forehead and the light brown hair curling out from under the cap, and he felt the bill of it touching his own head up near the hairline. He heard the rush of the water up the sand and against his ankles. Hood had never been kissed with such generosity.

  “I need your help checking out of the hotel, Hood. Due to heightened security.”

  “I understand.”

  In room 302 he took off his coat and hung it on a chair and sat. She showered and came out in a black slip and stood in front of him, and Hood lost most of what reason he had left. He carried her to the bed. It was like two tornadoes competing for the same trailer park. When they were done he lay on his back with his head over the edge of the bed breathing hard and looking out the curtained window to the upside-down Pacific. He wondered at the path that had led him here but he couldn’t see any path at all. Then he was up and herding her back into the bed and truly believing that at this moment he ruled the known world.

  “Oh, Hood. Charles Robert. Let’s hear it for Bakersfield.”

  16

  Lupercio stood on his back patio and watched the tumbleweeds shiver against the chain-link fence. Beyond the fence a dirt devil augured across the desert floor then spun itself out. The sun hung red and wavering and his outdoor thermometer read 104 degrees. It was good to be home.

  Adelanto lay around him, a struggling city in the desert north of L.A. It was poor and dirty but had just enough Latin Americans to make Lupercio more or less invisible. There was hardly a window in the city that wasn’t protected by iron, and although some of it was decoratively wrought, the rest was the straight vertical bars of jail cells around the world. Up until a few years ago the police were running a casino and a brothel, the streets flowed with drugs, and the civic leaders were pocketing public money as fast as they could grab it. In this it was like the El Salvador of Lupercio’s youth.

  But Lupercio knew the true difference between the norte and the centro, because nowhere in Adelanto or anywhere else in the Estado Unidos did freshly murdered bodies appear each morning as they did at Puerta del Diablo—unexplained and uninvestigated. Piles of them, thrown from the verdant heights above—decapitated, dismembered, hacked, beaten, burned. News would spread through the village each morning, how many new bodies were found “on top.” When his brother disappeared, Lupercio had climbed over the piled bodies at the Devil’s Door many mornings, turning over the fresh ones on top in search of him. When his father disappeared, Lupercio had done it again.