L. A. Outlaws Read online

  At twelve-thirty I pull into the crowded Residence Inn self-park, find a space and park.

  An old black Lincoln pulls up behind me at an angle, headlights on high beam. The thought races through my mind that I’m about to die.

  I slam the Sentra into reverse and floor it. The car jumps backward about a foot before crashing into the Lincoln’s formidable front end. While my front tires scream and smoke, I know that the Sentra doesn’t have the strength to budge the Lincoln.

  There are cars on either side of me and a hedge of oleander in front. In front of the oleander is a concrete tire block and behind it is a chain-link fence. I throw the car into drive and floor it straight ahead over the block. I aim the Sentra between the shrubs and into the fence. I hear the rip of metal on metal, and I see the right headlight burst in a bright shower of safety-glass shards, and I feel the awful stretch of the chain-link fence as it slows the Sentra almost to a stop. It’s like getting stuck in a spider’s web. Then I feel the fence weaken and see it collapse over the front of the Sentra, and suddenly I’m accelerating and the uprooted metal fence posts are shooting sparks as I drag them along each side of my car. Then I’m under the fence and past it and in the rearview mirror I see the fence posts skidding and the chain link bouncing to a stop, and I am thinking, This is a miracle, but the big black Lincoln suddenly barrels through the mess toward me. Willpower is no match for horsepower.

  I gun it out of the parking lot and onto Hawthorne Boulevard before I realize I’m running on a blown front tire. At fifty miles an hour the Sentra is shimmying so hard I can barely hold the wheel, then it zigs hard right and all I can do is follow onto the first side street, which leads to another side street, then another, and it’s all tract homes and driveways and streetlights and Father in Heaven I never thought Allison Murrieta would die in the suburbs.

  I pull up curbside, get Cañonita and sling the satchel over my neck and one shoulder as I walk across a neat front yard. It’s dark and still. I throw my CFM heels in a rose bed. Then I jump a side fence and pray there’s no Dobermans or rotters or pit bulls waiting.

  I’m across the dogless backyard in seconds. I can hear the Lincoln idling on the street near my Sentra. Then I’m over the back fence and across the adjacent backyard to another side fence and fast over that one, too, and dogs are barking now and some of them sound real close but I’m on the sidewalk, one street over from where Lupercio is maybe still parked and scratching his flat-top and figuring what to do. Hustling across the front yard, I can see that Lupercio’s got a fair way to go to bring that Lincoln around to me. It’s a long street, families sleeping, alarm clocks set. And as soon as I hear or see an approaching car, I’ll cut back through more yards the same way I got here. Then I’ll make it back to the boulevard, where the people are. My heart is pounding painfully hard as I ease into my runner’s pace, get the satchel balanced evenly and tell myself that I might have to run until the sun comes up in order to make it through this night alive.

  I look behind me and see no one.

  God bless this long Torrance street. And the next one, which takes me back toward Hawthorne, which is where I need to be. I finally hit my rhythm—my heartbeat and my breathing mesh—and I stretch out my stride a little more and remember what a pleasure it is to run barefoot down a sidewalk on a summer night.

  I look behind me and see Lupercio.

  Not in his Lincoln, but running after me. His short legs work like pistons and his plaid shirt is tucked in and the machete in his right hand flashes in the streetlights.

  He’s gaining.

  I cut across a front yard, over a fence, through a backyard, over a fence into another backyard, then leap another side fence and find myself one full street closer to where I started.

  When I turn I see Lupercio advancing through the shadows, as if he’s matched my every footstep with two of his own.

  The new street is older and not as generously lit as the first two. The trees are larger and the sidewalk is narrower and I can hear the tap of Lupercio’s boots behind me. I stretch out my stride again, get my knees up higher, eating up longer and longer bites of ground, but I can tell without looking back that he’s closing in. I pass a living room lit behind the blinds, a “Security Solutions” sign poked in the middle of a lawn, a trike on a walkway leading to a front door.

  I run harder.

  And harder.

  I don’t need to look back. The boots are hitting faster than my bare feet and this is the time to live or die.

  I stop and turn. I point Cañonita.

  Lupercio stops, too. He’s under a streetlight, fifteen feet away. He angles quickly for the light pole and I fire.

  There’s an ear-splitting boom and a loud twang and sparks jump off the streetlight stanchion. I’ve missed him by five feet. All I can think to do is turn and run again. I’ve got one shot left.

  So I’m across another front yard and over a side fence but my tank top catches on the top as I go over. The blouse is half ripped off and half hung up. I can hear Lupercio charging as I get the material in one fist and yank it free, but by then he’s half over the fence himself, above me, and I point Cañonita at him, but there’s this terrible blur coming at me from above his head and instead of pulling the trigger I pull the gun away just as the top of the fence splits and the machete blade lodges deep and true in the wood.

  I’m gone.

  I hear him cursing, and the sharp squeak of steel caught in lumber. I take the next two fences vault style, with Cañonita in my mouth and both hands braced on the fence tops and my arms burning as they push me up and over.

  I tumble onto the wet grass of a front yard and I can see the boulevard just a hundred yards away now and I roll and stand and run, digging down for everything I’ve got. I’m drenched in sweat. Running to stay in shape is different than running to stay alive.

  When I look behind me I see no one.

  I make Hawthorne Boulevard, press Cañonita into my pocket and put out my thumb.

  The third car pulls over and the passenger window goes down. Two boys in the front, white shirts, ties, young Republican haircuts.

  “Do you need help?”

  “I need to get in your car. Then I need to make one call, and I need you two guys to wait with me while Triple A comes.”

  They look at each other, then the nearest one nods.

  Yep, Jehovah’s Witnesses in a five-year-old Malibu. A gift from heaven. I open the door and push aside a bound bundle of The Watchtower and sit.

  “Where’s your car, ma’am?”

  “Let’s give it a few minutes. There’s a bad person involved. He ripped my blouse. How about donuts? You guys like donuts?”

  “Yes, we do. There’s a Winchell’s up here.”

  And plenty of cops.

  “Perfect,” I say, digging my phone out of the satchel.

  Back at the airport Marriott, door locked and chain in place, and reloaded Cañonita on the bathroom counter, I sit on the edge of the tub in the dark with my feet in the warm soapy water. There are cuts and splinters all over them and my heels are badly bruised. It hurts.

  But my brain hurts worse because I’m trying to figure out how Lupercio always seems to know where I am and I really don’t like the answer I’m getting.

  How did he know about Miracle Auto Body? How did he know about Valley Center and Torrance?

  Be logical here.

  Okay, maybe Amanda, the clerk who checked me into the Residence Inn, was a friend of Lupercio’s. She was a plump redhead who looked about twenty and was reading a Harlequin romance when I walked up to the front desk. You tell me.

  Or, maybe someone else at the Residence Inn was a friend of Lupercio’s—a higher-up who could scan the computer for the names of the guests checking in and out. Sure, maybe. But Lupercio is freelance. He works alone. He murdered half of his own gang. So how many friends does he have in how many hotels in a city with hundreds and hundreds of them? You tell me that, too.

  I didn’t tell
anyone where I was staying. Not Ernest, no one.

  Now consider this: Handsome Hood and Lupercio are related by time and space. Hood shows up at Miracle Auto Body; Lupercio is there, too. Hood shows up at my home in Valley Center; Lupercio is right on his heels. Hood suggests the Residence Inn for a good night’s sleep and who should be there waiting for me?

  They connect. So, maybe Hood was covering Lupercio at Miracle Auto Body that night. That’s why he rousted me—just in case I’d seen something. Man, did I—and I was dumb enough to tell him all about it. He knew I lived in Valley Center and he knew I’d come back to the Residence Inn. On the beach in Laguna he pretty much accused me of taking the diamonds, so maybe he knew about them all along.

  Hood buttered my toast in the Hotel Laguna but maybe the heavy secret inside his heart was that I was about to be killed—no witness to Lupercio that night, no witness to himself. And there’s this, too: If Hood is tight with Lupercio and if he reasons like I’ve reasoned, he knows that I’ve got the diamonds, and he knows I’ll keep them close, in the very possible case that I need to buy my life with them. Thus, close enough for them to find. Then they’ve got no witness and my forty-five thousand dollars’ worth of rocks in their pockets.

  I lift my feet from the water and towel them off. They hurt like hell. I hope there’s nothing stuck in them. I see Lupercio’s machete flashing like lightning above me and then hear the dry bark of the metal splitting wood. Probably would have sounded about the same splitting my arm. I turn on the light and the bathtub water is pink. I hobble into the bedroom and lie down and look at the clock radio. My feet hurt and I want my mother, even though she probably wouldn’t be too happy with me.

  If I’m right about Hood and Lupercio then I’m wrong about Hood. It would disappoint me to think that my judgment could be so poor. But I’d rather be disappointed than dismembered. I thought I’d outgrown my attraction for cute losers sixteen years ago when I threw out Bradley’s father for taking his niece to our bed. Before I threw him out I shot his bare ass with a .22 pistol. The bullet went right through both cheeks, left big ugly wounds. Made me feel better. He’s still afraid of me, which should be the natural order of things with guys like him.

  But Hood? I hope I’m figuring wrong. I want to be wrong.

  It’s late. I can see the gray ellipse of morning coming through the slit in the drawn blinds. I can hear the murmur of L.A. around me and the roar of the jets and the thumping of closing doors and the distant ding of the elevator.

  I get Hood on his cell.

  “Hi, Hood.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Not telling, don’t ask.”

  “I’ve been calling all night.”

  “My good night’s sleep in Torrance just about got me killed. Lupercio came a few inches from cutting my arm off with that machete. Where were you when I needed you?”

  “On patrol. I drove the Residence lot at six o’clock and once again every hour until midnight. I knocked on the door of your room each time. Where were you?”

  “Never saw the old black Lincoln?”

  Silence then and I wonder what Hood is thinking.

  “I got there at twelve-thirty,” I say. “Lupercio pulled in right behind me. I ran through a fence to get away. He didn’t follow me in. He was there, waiting.”

  “Goddamn, Suzanne.”

  “Goddamn is right. I ran a mile barefoot on streets and sidewalks. I jumped a million fences. Everything hurts.”

  “Have you checked your car for a location transponder? That’s a—”

  “I know what it is, Hood.”

  I can’t tell him how many cars I’ve stolen and driven since Miracle Auto Body, that you’d need a team of confederates just to keep those cars in transponders. This thought brings me a very brief smile. And I also can’t tell him that I checked Barry Cohen’s backpack for a transponder, too—just before I boosted the F-150 in San Berdoo after I’d lost Lupercio and his lame-ass Lincoln at the signal at Eastern in City Terrace.

  “Yes,” I say. “I checked.”

  “How?”

  “Got on my back, crawled under and looked.”

  “Are you driving the Corvette?”

  “You can’t crawl under that car. No. My old Sentra.”

  “What about your purse, or a briefcase, or something you carry with you?”

  “No transponders that I know of. When could he have put one in place, Hood? I saw him for a total of four seconds that night and we were never less than twenty feet apart.”

  “You have to look again. Look everywhere again. They’re small now.”

  I take a deep breath and let it out. Can’t believe how tired I am. “Hell’s bells.”

  “Did you tell Ernest where you were?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll come get you.”

  “I don’t know about you, Hood. Every time I see you, Lupercio shows up. Every time I see Lupercio, you’re in the picture, too. That really bothers me.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Then how did he know about the Residence Inn?”

  “Hell, Suzanne.”

  “Maybe someone you work with—your boss or something.”

  “No.”

  “Easy for you to say. But I was the one looking up at that machete. By the way, Lupercio’s got a new hairstyle. It’s a buzz.”

  I hang up and call in for my messages. Ernest has called twice with full reports on how the boys are doing. Bradley caught a six-foot barrel at Oceanside, got tubed and came out. Jordan caught four fish off the pier. The dogs are fine. The Sequoia is leaking oil. Ernest misses me.

  Hood has called ten times in the last twelve hours. I hear his voice go from gently polite to annoyed to worried to fearful.

  Maybe he really is who I thought he was. Maybe I have him figured wrong.

  Same way he’s figured me.

  19

  Hood stood in the Residence Inn parking lot and looked where the chain-link fence had been. The flattened mesh lay a hundred feet into the adjacent lot along with three ripped-up stanchions.

  Torrance PD had taped off the area sometime during the night, but they were gone now, a little after sunrise. They’d made no arrests, had not identified the vehicle involved. They wrote it up as vandalism.

  On the sun-faded asphalt Hood saw the tire marks in front of the cement parking bumper, and the broken headlight glass behind it. There was another set of tire marks—the kind left by heavy acceleration or heavy braking—and these were set more widely apart and the tires were fatter than the first set. Hood pictured the big black Lincoln bearing down on Suzanne Jones, whose little Sentra had already lost a headlight. Too bad she wasn’t in the yellow Corvette. He had the thought that Suzanne Jones had used up a lifetime of good luck in the few days he’d known her. He called her again but she didn’t answer.

  Hood spent an hour in his temporary homicide cubicle, writing an affidavit for an arrest warrant for Lupercio Maygar. It was his first warrant request and he knew the wording had to be right. He was a slow but accurate writer and when he was done with the statutory page he read it to himself and was convinced that the judge would issue.

  He sat in the empty courtroom as the judge read the request in chambers. He called Suzanne again but she wouldn’t pick up. He was starting to think that he couldn’t help her if she wouldn’t let him. He regretted what they had done in Laguna but wanted to do it again. A few minutes later a bailiff walked the signed and stamped warrant to Hood and said, Good luck, I hope you stick this guy.

  Hood sat across from Melissa Levery in a coffee bar on Gower. It was noon by now, but they got a corner table in the crowded little room. Melissa was a fair-skinned and dark-haired young woman with a pretty face. She was heavily made up in spite of what appeared to be a nearly flawless complexion. Her eyes were green and remarkably beautiful. She had wiped away a tear when Hood sat down, but now, several minutes into the story of her poor treatment by Barry, something hard and eager had come in
to her eyes.

  She told him that Barry had owed money to the Wilton Street Asian Boyz, and that he wanted to pay them in diamonds, which of course were insured. The Boyz were happy because Barry totally misrepresented the value of stolen diamonds. Barry got the idea of cutting in another gang for less payment and he knew some Salvadorans—a rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul thing and that was pure Barry because he was smart but not real smart. Story of his life.

  Melissa told Hood about the money she’d lent him and he’d promptly lost at the Caesar’s Sports Book—ten thousand dollars of a Roth IRA she’d earned as a Lancôme rep—and the way Barry thought he could run her off and cancel his debt to her by taking up with other girls and he’d done just that, taken up with them. This was where Hood had seen the hardness in her eyes. She began describing the girls. One had been a friend. Hood liked the way she talked on without a comma because it bode well for his main purpose here. He wanted to get her back to the bigger picture, but it was a hard thing to be subtle about.

  “How much did he owe the Asian Boyz?”

  “Seventy-five grand.” She took another sip of the elaborate coffee drink that she had ordered a few minutes ago. She had been drinking one when Hood got there, so this was at least her second.

  “You told me the rocks were worth forty-five grand on the street. So Barry was underpaying them, dramatically.”

  “The Boyz didn’t know that. And they sure didn’t know they were going to get ripped off by MS-13. I read the papers. There were more people there than Barry thought would be there. It was a bigger thing than he was ready for.”

  She looked down now at the cheap wooden table, scratched at the surface with a manicured nail, exhaled. “Barry didn’t deserve that. He was basically a good guy. He was Barry. He didn’t deserve what happened.”

  “He stole from you and betrayed his partners and brought this upon himself,” said Hood. And he thought that Barry had set up five Wilton Street Asian Boyz to be murdered by Mara Salvatrucha. Maybe Barry wasn’t sure about numbers, but he was sure about outcome.