L. A. Outlaws

by T. Jefferson Parker

He watched the door open halfway, then swing all the way out.

  A heavy, round-faced woman dislodged herself and took three hurried steps through the fog, away from the car toward Hood. She raised her hands. Hood saw the car keys dangling from the right.

  “Don’ shoot! Don’ shoot! I have my daughters! We are not a gang! We are lost!”

  She whirled and rattled off rapid Spanish toward the car and then Hood saw the back door open and a young woman get out, followed by another who looked exactly like her.

  Away from the yellow lights of the Mariposa lot, Hood now saw that the Lincoln was not black but dark green.

  The girls raised their hands and stood on either side of their mother. Hood brandished his shield and came toward them, pistol pointed up at the sky. He kept them in his vision, but what he focused on was the interior of the car.

  “Los Angeles Sheriff’s,” he said. “Don’t move.”

  The mother and the second girl out had both left the doors open, and Hood saw no one else in the car, but he knew Lupercio was small and nimble, so he trotted past the women and aimed his gun into the car as he walked completely around it to make sure it was empty.

  Back at the driver’s-side door Hood leaned in and ran his left hand along the bottom of the dash until he found the trunk release.

  He pulled it and heard the lock disengage and saw the trunk lid open an inch or two.

  He walked closely alongside the car, and when he got to the trunk, Hood reached over with his left hand and lifted it up.

  Then he stepped back and circled the rear of the car, aiming his gun in.

  There were three large suitcases, a folding garment bag and three carry-ons.

  He holstered his pistol.

  “Please come over here,” he called to the women.

  They hustled over, and suddenly Hood smelled their perfume and hair products and makeup. Their eyes were wide and their faces looked stunned but hopeful.

  “What were you doing at the Mariposa?”

  “We want to go to the Hacienda.”

  “It’s south of the airport. El Segundo.”

  “Please tell me how to go there. We are lost. We have very early flight to Caracas.”

  “Caracas.”

  “I am a United States citizen. My daughters are United States citizens. We will show you passports.”

  “Thank you.”

  Hood eyed the three big pieces of luggage in the Lincoln trunk.

  Then looked down at the mother’s passport: Consuelo Encarnación, DOB 12/26/1970.

  In his dawning humiliation Hood asked to see her driver’s license also.

  The daughters obeyed, too, and Hood examined all three CDLs, every few seconds glancing over at the big suitcases in the trunk of the Continental.

  “Thank you,” he said, returning Serena Encarnación’s current and valid driver’s license.

  “Thank you,” he said, returning Lucia’s. “Wait here, please.”

  He walked over to the Lincoln and pulled the carry-ons and the folding bag from the trunk and set them on the ground. He unzipped the big black suitcase that was on its back, saw clothes and no Lupercio, shook his head. He wrestled the other two over and checked them next. He heard one of the girls giggle. He felt like a fool.

  Back with the women he apologized and said he was looking for Lupercio Maygar.

  Hood saw recognition on the mother’s face.

  “We saw the TV,” said Consuelo. “We don’ know him.”

  The twin girls silently looked at the ground.

  Hood had seen the same look on Iraqi people, a look of anger and shame at being mistaken for criminals or killers or sectarian rabble. But it was a look that not only the innocent could produce.

  He checked the Lincoln’s registration and wrote down the plates, and the names, dates of birth and address for the Encarnación family of Fontana. Consuelo gave him a phone number.

  Hood apologized then gave them directions to their hotel.

  He trailed them three cars back, down Century to Sepulveda, then south to the Hacienda. They turned into the busy check-in area, and Hood passed them, then swung a U-turn back toward the Mariposa.

  In room 6 he waited out the sunrise with donuts and lukewarm coffee. He wanted badly to do something right. He thought about the mother and twins and if he should drive out to Fontana for a look around. He doubted that Lupercio had shown at Valley Center either, but the plan was for Suzanne to call when it was light.

  At six-thirty she called—no Lupercio, she said, and no sleep, not a creature stirring except an owl that floated out of the big oak tree at three-twenty and just about gave her a heart attack then flew back into the tree thirty seconds later with a pale shiny rattlesnake that buzzed until the bird ate its head. The owl was still perched there, eyes closed and the shredded carcass hanging over the oak branch. She wanted the rattle for Jordan but couldn’t figure out how to get it.

  “No Lupercio, Hood?”

  “No. Just a mother and two daughters on their way to Venezuela.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  Hood did, as he pulled the curtains almost shut. He returned to the chair, stepping through the snack wrappers and chocolate milk cartons and the spent energy-vitamin packet.

  “Now what?” she asked. “We still don’t know which of your bosses is ratting me out.”

  “He sensed the trap.”

  “But we’re okay if nobody saw us, right? We’ve got our little traitor wondering if we’re as dumb as he thinks we are.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Who are your suspects, Hood?”

  “You don’t know them.”

  “What do they look like?”

  “Cops.”

  She was quiet for a beat.

  “When I get a mouse in the pantry, I put the peanut butter on the trap but I don’t set it the first night. I just let him eat. Second night I put on peanut butter and set it. Kills them every time.”

  “He’s smarter than a mouse.”

  “I’m not going to live like this anymore. If I wait for Lupercio to find me, he will. I have to act.”

  “Act how, Suzanne?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “You sound like you do.”

  She didn’t answer, and Hood listened to the silence then the rumble of another jet lumbering out of the sky toward the runway.

  “You must really miss me, Hood.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s light here now and I’m still in the tree house. I’ve got your shotgun leaned up against the wall. The sun is coming up over the hills and colors are starting to form. The pond is dark shiny gray. It looks like the mercury that Jordan spilled out of the thermometer a couple of weeks ago. There are hills the color of lions and no houses on them. If a herd of wildebeest came down from Betty’s right now it would look perfectly natural.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “It’s more than nice.”

  Hood pictured her. “I wish I could have met you some better way.”

  “You get what you take.”

  “It’s the other way around.”

  “The other way around is bullshit.”

  Hood saw Allison Murrieta from the news the night before, nervously clowning around with the surfers and the 7-Eleven clerk just before her gun discharged. The clerk said he thought it was an accident. One of the surfers said he thought she was showing off. She took seven-hundred-plus dollars. The TV reporter said that in the last two days, five Southland charitable organizations had reported cash donations apparently made by Allison Murrieta, one as high as twelve thousand dollars. A San Diego charity said they got five thousand. The L.A. Police Foundation admitted getting an envelope in the mail with an undisclosed amount of cash and a card from Allison Murrieta.

  “How should we have met, Hood?”

  “Maybe you would have won a big hapkido tournament and I would have won CIF at tennis, and the Bakersfield Sun would have run our pictures on the same page.”

&
nbsp; “What’s better about that?”

  “It’s better than you being stalked by a killer.”

  “Naw. What if we were back-to-back winners on Millionaire ? And they’d want our pictures together after the show—you and me and Meredith? And after drinks at a very posh bar our natural-born hotness for each other just took over? And we each took a year off work to do nothing but travel and learn the history of the world and have sex in totally cool hotel rooms?”

  “That’s a good one, Suzanne. There should be a great car in there, somewhere, for the U.S. portion of our travels.”

  “With a million bucks you can buy a lot of great cars.”

  “I like the Camaro, but if I had the money I’d get the Cayenne Turbo.”

  “I’d get a Saleen Mustang and a Harley fat-boy and still have more money left over than you.”

  “You know how to stretch a dollar.”

  Suzanne laughed and Hood laughed, too. He was still sitting in his canvas fold-up chair, back from the window, where he could see the flash of cars coming and going from the Mariposa and hear the slamming doors of travelers and the rising noise of traffic out on Aviation.

  “You know, Hood, we could actually do all that without winning a game show. We just take a year off, put our money together and go. Make a perfect world.”

  Hood thought about that one. He had eleven grand in the bank but eight of it was an IRA.

  “What about your boys?”

  “They got this thing called mail. And telephones. Ernest is a very good father and stepfather. They all might like me gone for a year. I’m overcontrolling when I’m home too much. I get fussy about the littlest things. I even drive me crazy, but I can’t help it.”

  Hood reached down under the chair and retrieved his last donut. He had the surprising thought that running away with Suzanne for a year would be a good way to keep Allison Murrieta from getting shot.

  “I could do it.”

  “But you won’t. You’re chicken. You’ll stay straight and narrow, try to get your sergeant’s stripes before you’re eighteen. Or however you deputies prove your greatness.”

  Hood laughed again. “You don’t know what I am.”

  “I can tell a lot about a man just by being sexually assaulted by him.”

  “Assaulted?”

  “Yeah,” she said dreamily. He heard her yawn. “The owl just spun his head around and he’s looking at me with one eye. It’s yellow.”

  “The parking lot of the Mariposa Motel is hopping.”

  “There’s a mockingbird down in the coral tree outside my bedroom. They make such pretty sounds.”

  “A bus just pulled in, big black cloud.”

  “Smells like damp grass and fresh water here.”

  “I got floor cleaner and cigarette smoke.”

  “If I go to the edge and look straight down, I see where the trunk goes underground and I know there’s a root ball the size of the tree itself under there.”

  “If I look down, I see an empty pack of donuts.”

  “I had donuts last night, too. We’re so much alike—great minds, and all that.”

  “That’s us.”

  “This is us,” she said.

  They were quiet for a long minute. Hood watched the cars jostling in and out of the lot and listened to the sound of Suzanne Jones’s breath in his ear. When she spoke again, it was almost a whisper.

  “Charlie, back when I was a teenager I had this policy about people moving me around, making me do what they wanted instead of what I wanted. My policy back then was don’t let it happen. Ever. Don’t give in and don’t turn away. Fight until you bleed if you have to. I based it on Roosevelt’s ‘Speak softly but carry a big stick.’ And that’s still my policy today. I won’t let someone move me around. Not your bosses and not Lupercio and not anybody. You should know that.”

  “Let me figure out what to do about Lupercio, Suzanne.”

  Another silence, another jet. “You figure it out, Hood.”

  “Bye, Suzanne.”

  “Bye, Charlie.”

  Just before nine A.M. Hood pulled up to the Encarnación address in Fontana: The Hosier & Reed Funeral Home.

  On the off chance that Consuelo and her daughters actually lived there—perhaps one or more of them acting in an after-hours capacity—Hood walked the building in search of an apartment or guest quarters.

  The building was one story and not yet open for business. Around the side Hood walked a chain-link fence that surrounded a healthy green lawn. There was a covered patio with some plastic chairs and an ashtray on a stand. A fountain stood in the middle of the lawn and a raven dug its head into the water then straightened and gave Hood a canny stare.

  The building looked too small to accommodate a business and living quarters for three. The rear half of it had few windows, and the rear door was not a residential one but an electric roll-up large enough to accommodate a hearse or a van.

  He dialed Consuelo’s number on his cell phone but was told that the call could not be completed as dialed. He tried it twice more with the same results.

  Hood felt less foolish for having rousted the woman and girls. They’d fooled him with fake ID but he still wondered if they were somehow connected to Lupercio Maygar. If so, Lupercio would soon know that instead of Suzanne Jones, a young LASD deputy had been waiting for him at the Mariposa. And if that was true, then she had been betrayed by Wyte.

  34

  Hood doesn’t have to figure out what to do with Lupercio because I already have.

  I call Guy and tell him I changed my mind. I’m ready to sell the diamonds. I’ll call back tonight at ten to arrange the meeting.

  And I know what he’s going to say when I call: I’ll come to you.

  Meaning Lupercio will come to me.

  Then I call my friend who works for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, a secretary who’s been there twelve years and knows things. I had her son at Franklin five years ago, nice kid, a curious mind. I tell her about my friend Guy. I describe him in some detail. I put him into the department hierarchy above Hood, but not so high up he’s deskbound. She listens, says she’ll think on it. What I think is, she’ll be able to help.

  Now I’m at the Sunset Tower Hotel because it used to be the Argyle and I loved being close to the ghosts of movie stars, I loved the stainless steel and the deco mirrors, the cast-iron palms around the pool and the great view of the city. That’s all gone now, except the views, but it’s a five-star property. Hood’s got no idea where I am. I may lure him here later tonight if everything goes right, feed him a couple of room service martinis and give him a bath in the silver tub.

  I’ve already made my arrangements for Lupercio, and now it’s time for a nighttime jog. I run up one side of the Sunset Strip and back down the other. It’s nice to be blond and not look like Suzanne or Allison. I feel free. I run past the Whiskey and the Rainbow and the Jaguar dealership I’d love to hit someday, past the Viper Room and the sidewalk where River died, past Hustler Hollywood and the cigar shops and boutiques and sushi bars all lit up under huge billboards flashing tits and ass for movies and TV shows and booze and clothes—man, the models look about Bradley’s age.

  Around me on the sidewalks are the people the ads are trying to sell to: couples walking close, single guys and dolls tracking each other down, some working girls, young queers with their cute walks and old ones with their cute dogs. I can smell the need in the air, in the mix of perfume and cologne and the exhale from the Armani store and car exhaust and meat smoke from the grill at Kings Road. Some of it comes from me.

  I get some looks and this is good.

  I get more looks an hour later in my almost new black Pontiac Solstice, which puts out two hundred and sixty horses and two hundred and sixty pound-feet of torque from a turbocharged four, though the steering is vague. I got it down in La Jolla on my way back from Valley Center earlier today. It was easy. I chose a good restaurant, watched this chick park her cute little car, let her get insid
e, then called the restaurant to say there was a black Solstice in the lot with the headlights on. When she came out to solve the problem, keys in hand, Allison introduced her to Cañonita. She told me she’d seen me on TV up at her boyfriend’s place in L.A. Later I cold-plated it so there’s no reason to pull me over.

  Superior Wrecking & Salvage is east of L.A., way out by the riverbed, dead automobiles stacked ten high, mountains of them rising from the flats along the Orange Freeway. Around it are rock quarries and billboards. My friend Phillip owns the place and he’s showed me a few things and turned the keys over to me for the night, no questions asked, just two thousand dollars cash for his generosity. If anything happens, I’m a trespasser.

  The office is in a metal building that reminds me of Angel’s staging place for his cars. The lights are off in the front of the building where the customers lean against an old counter and deal with Phillip’s employees. Behind the counter are two large cubicles, and down a short hallway is the inner sanctum, Phillip’s personal lair.

  I sit at his desk. I’m Allison but without the mask. Phillip has disarmed the security alarm system, as I asked him to. For a moment I watch the bank of video monitors built into one wall. There are twelve screens in all, four rows of three across, each a live feed from the security cameras positioned around Superior’s eight fenced acres. Most of the ground lights are on, per my request. The wrecking yard glows in the night, steel and paint and chrome vibrant in the floodlights. Even the rust seems bright. I never knew there were so many different shades of it. The cranes hover over the automotive bodies like undertakers. There are four of them, and their big engines are all idling against the night, another arrangement Phillip has made at my request.

  I dial. Guy answers and I tell him where to meet me. I tell him not to let the activity in the yard bother him. He says he’s on his way. He sounds pleasant and sincere.

  I like that.

  A few minutes later I’m seated high up in the cab of one of the power-operated electromagnetic cranes, a seven-thousand-pound capacity Ortlingauer that Phillip bought used two years ago. Its monstrous diesel engines idle throaty and deep and I can feel the rumble through the very thin padding of the steel cab seat. The power of these machines is intoxicating. The yard buzzes with sound and light.