The Renegades: A Charlie Hood Novel Read online

  “I feel action on tap tonight, Charlie. That’s good. You know Mouse Washington? You seen him? Big, Eight Tray Crip, built like a Hummer? Lives with his mom and a bunch of pit bulls in a Section Eight? He beat the piss out of two Bloods right outside the mall yesterday. Two of his dogs held them, deep puncture wounds all up and down their legs. One of ’em’s still in the hospital.”

  Hood, in his six short months up here in the desert, had seen that the gangs were thriving. There had been another killing just last week, a seventeen-year-old clicked up with Eighteenth, standing on a street corner waving a big foam “New Homes” sign shaped like an arrow. Hood had learned that these people were called “human directionals” by the developers who hired them, but most people just called them sign wavers. He’d also noted that some of them got really good at it—twirls and aerials and behind-the-back NBA stuff. They could entertain you at a stoplight. But when the Blood gun car had passed by, the human directional with the “New Homes” sign had six bullets in him and he died later in a hospital.

  “Speaking of dog bites,” said Laws. He unbuttoned his long-sleeved uniform shirt and showed Hood his left forearm, discolored and punctured, but healing. “That’s what I got for helping a guy out.” He turned on the dome light for a moment and looked at the wound as if it were a mystery he hadn’t yet solved.

  “Dog have shots?”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry, I’m not going rabid on you.”

  They pulled into the Legacy housing development. Big homes, two stories, peaked roofs with dormers and faux shutters on the windows. The tract was ten years old and some of the houses already looked like they should be condemned. The desert ages buildings and people twice as fast as anywhere else.

  Fourteen-eleven Storybook had a dead brown lawn, weeds eating through the driveway concrete and a broken window patched with plywood against the cold. There were signs of effort, too: a couple of shiny kids’ bikes up by the porch and a bird feeder swinging from a lemon tree in the middle of the dead grass, and a bed of wind-lashed rosebushes by the garage.

  A Housing Authority van was parked in the driveway, two men standing by the driver’s door. Hood and Laws pulled up to the curb opposite and parked just short of a peppertree thrashing in the wind. Hood heard the crunch and rattle of peppercorns when he stepped out of the car and crossed the street.

  The Housing Authority investigators were Strummer and Fernandez, both mid-forties, both wearing jeans and athletic shoes, Los Angeles County Housing Authority windbreakers and baseball caps. Strummer had lank blond hair and a long nose. Fernandez, who held a clipboard, was slope-shouldered and short.

  Strummer explained that they’d heard complaints of marijuana use and loud music, and rumors that the boys living here had broken into a neighboring home, stolen a flat-screen plasma HDTV and put the family’s Chihuahua in the freezer before they left. The dog was almost dead when the family found it, but it had survived. Nobody had filed a complaint with the Sheriff’s Department.

  “Single mom, Jacquilla Roberts,” said Strummer. “Sons sixteen and eighteen, down with the Southside Crips. Two young ones. She’s got a boyfriend, of course—a Lynwood felon who smelled the easy pickings up here in the desert. He’s not supposed to live here but he mostly does. Fine citizens all.”

  “We’ll see what we see,” said Hood.

  He and Laws followed the investigators up the walk. The porch light was on.

  “If you guys draw some iron we’ve got a better chance of being invited in,” said Strummer.

  “Draw your own iron,” said Laws.

  “Would if I could.”

  “That’s exactly why nobody will give you a gun.”

  “I’m trying to do my job.”

  “Then do it.”

  Strummer banged hard on the front door and waited. Then he banged again.

  A woman’s voice asked who it was and Strummer told her to open the goddamned door.

  She was a tall black, strongly built and angry. Hood guessed upper thirties. She had on white warm-ups and white athletic socks and a white sweatshirt. Her hair was straightened and pulled back from a handsome face. She looked at each one of the men with an unhurried hostility.

  “I don’t have to let you in.”

  “We’ve had reports of drug use and loud music,” said Strummer. “We want to talk to you and your sons.”

  “Come back with a warrant.”

  “We have the cops instead,” said Fernandez. “These are Deputies Laws and Hood. We have no warrant because we don’t wish to arrest you. We simply want to assess your status under Section Eight. We’ll be back with the paper tomorrow, or we can get this interview out of the way now.”

  She shook her head and pushed open the door. The house was warm inside and smelled of fried fish and vinegar and mentholated tobacco. By the time Jacquilla Roberts had shut the door, Strummer was marching into the heart of the house, followed by Fernandez.

  “They can’t do that,” she said, watching them walk into her kitchen. “I know they can’t.”

  “They can’t come in if you don’t invite them,” said Laws. “But once inside they can do a plain-sight search.”

  She glowered at Laws.

  “Are your sons home?” asked Hood.

  “Two young ones are upstairs watching the TV. Two older ones are out I don’t know where. I got home from the plant about half an hour ago. I barely had time to get my long pants and work shoes off and you show up. That story about the dog in the freezer ain’t true. Everyone talking about it. My older ones have some problematic behavior at times but they don’t go puttin’ no dogs in freezers.”

  “Tell the housing guys,” said Laws.

  “Authority. They have no authority over me.”

  “Don’t aggravate them,” said Hood. “They can make your life miserable.”

  He and Laws followed her down a short hallway and past the stairs. Two boys watched in silence from the shadows on the landing. Hood nodded at them and he heard the wind whistle against the house outside.

  The kitchen opened to the dining room. There were pans and dishes in the sink and cut flowers on the counter and big boxes of kids’ cereal and a jar of instant coffee under the cupboards. A pile of newspapers by a red trash can. A stainless steel bowl of dry cat food and a matching one of water. Hood saw that things were messy but not dirty.

  Strummer was using a blue pen to poke around in a big red glass ashtray on the counter by the flowers.

  Fernandez was looking down into a big fake-snakeskin purse that sat slumped and open on the dining room table. He pulled a hardpack of Kools from the purse, tilted open the top and looked inside as he shook it. “We heard some boys broke in one block over, on Shady Lane, and ripped off a big-screen and put this dog—”

  “You heard bullshit, mister.”

  “Good weed isn’t cheap,” announced Strummer. “Maybe these boys—whoever they were—broke in, looking for some money to buy more of this.”

  He held up the pen, which wasn’t a pen at all but a mechanical pencil, the kind with the clamp at the end to hold the lead. Or to grasp something. In this case, a small black roach.

  Jacquilla looked at Hood, then at Strummer. “It ain’t mine.”

  “But it’s here,” said Strummer. “And our drug policy is zero tolerance. That really does mean zero. This is enough to get you evicted. Fifty percent of our investigations result in evictions, Ms. Roberts. Fifty.”

  “It ain’t mine. Mister, I got friends come here, maybe party sometimes. I got two older ones that might get into some trouble now and then. I admit. But that ain’t mine and I’m who signed the Section Eight papers to live here and I am not going back to South Central on account of what is not mine.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Laws. “There’s no profit in this.”

  The wind kicked up and flailed at the walls.

  “How many kids you have?” asked Strummer.

  “Four.”

  “By how many men?”
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  She glared at him and said nothing.

  “Where are your two older sons?”

  “They gone to get take-out. I don’t feel like cooking again tonight, not after eight hours on the PCB line.”

  Fernandez looked at his clipboard. “Keenan and Kelvin. We need to see their rooms.”

  The youngsters scattered as the four men started up the stairs. A door slammed and there was laughter behind it. The room shared by the older boys was hot and cramped and smelled like bleach and cigarette smoke. There was a twin bed along one wall and a sleeping pad and bag along another. A closet stood open, mounds of clothing piled on the floor, more hanging. An old Zenith TV sat on the floor in a corner, with labyrinths of wires leading to a DVD player and a satellite receiver and an Xbox. The carpet was dirty and strewn with games on CD. From amid the sea of plastic game boxes rose a push-up bench with two hundred pounds on the barbell. Strong boys, thought Hood. The walls had posters of Suge Knight and Tupac, Mary Blige and Ludacris, Snipes as Blade, Smith as Ali, and the old Death Row Records logo with the masked guy strapped into the electric chair.

  Fernandez went to the closet, leaned in and sniffed at something. Jacquilla stared at him.

  “Keenan and Kelvin drive to get the take-out?” asked Strummer. “Or did they walk?”

  “They took my car, soon as I got home.”

  “An hour and a half to get take-out?”

  She tried to glare again at Strummer, but Hood saw something go out of her. “It might be late.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet it might be,” said Strummer. “You don’t even know where they are, do you?”

  “Out there. In the wind.”

  Strummer shook his head and sighed. “We’ll be in touch. Come on, Al. I’ve seen enough.”

  Laws and Hood thanked Jacquilla on their way out and she slammed the door behind them. Strummer gunned the van down Storybook.

  “Idiots,” said Laws.

  Hood let himself into the cruiser. As Laws settled in, Hood looked out at the swaying peppertree and wondered how long Keenan and Kelvin would be out tonight. Terry closed his door.

  Hood turned the key and got nothing.

  Dead battery, thought Hood.

  “Let’s take a look,” said Laws.

  Hood was feeling for the Interceptor’s hood release when he saw the windswept swaying of the peppertree become a different kind of motion—something thicker, concentrated and purposeful.

  Someone coming.

  Someone stopping in front of the car, on Laws’s side.

  Black man. Detroit Tigers hoodie. Sunglasses, red bandana worn pirate style, shiny black gloves. Vaguely familiar. And an M249 SAW machine gun pointed at Laws.

  Hood was reaching for his weapon when the machine gun rattled and the windshield shattered and Laws screamed. Hood shouldered open the door and rolled into the street as the bullets whapped into metal and flesh. Then he heard a metallic clang and a pause in the volley, so he rose into a shooter’s crouch just as another spray of bullets cracked into the door right in front of him and something hot hit his face. He scrambled around the back of the car and came up again with his sidearm in both hands but the shooter was already midair, vaulting a fence into someone’s backyard. Behind the shooter Hood saw a house light go on and a face in the window and he held fire, cursing as he ran around to the driver’s side of the cruiser.

  He pulled Terry flat to the seat and felt his neck for a pulse. Nothing. A car engine came to life one block over. Hood looked down at Terry’s ragged body then grabbed the radio handset and called in the officer down.

  Then he broke out the shotgun and ran to the street corner, just fifty yards away. But the car was gone and there was only wind whistling against a light pole, and the lights coming on in the houses, and the deafening report of his heart.

  Hood ran back to the cruiser and hit the flashers. He stood looking down at Laws, then covered him with his duty jacket. He made a promise. The cold hit his back and he felt the sharp pain in his right cheek. He wiped away the blood and looked in the sideview mirror and saw the dark shard of metal, or perhaps lead, hooked into his skin.

  By then the residents were gathering in the street, wrapped in jackets and robes. Hood told them a deputy had been shot to death and the gunman was still out there, go back inside and stay safe. A few of them did this, but most of them stood staring at the bullet-riddled radio car as if hypnotized by the flashing lights. Hood saw the steam coming from their mouths and noses and he kept them away from the car and his dead partner, shivering as he waited for help.

  2

  Hood tried to talk to the homicide detectives at the scene, but two men emerged from the darkness, badged the dicks and said they were part of the Internal Affairs “shoot unit” and this was theirs.

  The detectives cursed and the IA men cursed back. But the bald black IA man in a sharp suit guided Hood away from the detectives, and the other, a white man in a beaten bomber jacket, fell in behind them. Half a block down the street, in a dark patch midway between two street lamps, a black plainwrap Mercury waited by the curb.

  Sharp Suit got into the driver’s seat and Bomber held open the rear driver’s-side door. In the faint dome light Hood saw a big craggy-faced man with a graying buzz cut and round, wire-rimmed glasses. Late fifties, high mileage, thought Hood. He wore cowboy boots and jeans and a white shirt with a leather vest.

  “I’m Warren,” he said. “Get in.”

  Hood sat and Bomber shut the door then went around and got in the front passenger seat.

  No one spoke until they were out on Twentieth Street, headed toward Edwards Air Force Base. The air conditioner was turned up high and Hood felt his muscles shuddering against the cold. He thought of his duty jacket, soon to be riding away in the coroner’s van with Terry.

  “Talk to me,” said Warren. His voice was rough and low. He set a small recorder on the seat and turned it on.

  It took Hood twenty minutes. By then they were north of the city limits, paralleling the base on Avenue E. Through the cold air Hood could still smell the faint sweet odor of coming snow. The Joshua trees flickered in the wind.

  “Describe the shooter again. Carefully. Everything about him.”

  “Black male, six feet tall, medium-to-slender build. Sunglasses and a red bandana worn pirate-style. His face was narrow, not wide. His nose and mouth were unremarkable. His skin was very dark. His hoodie was black with the Detroit Tigers logo on it. He used an M249 squad assault weapon. He fired it right-handed, with the butt jammed into his middle and his left hand pushing down on the stock to keep the muzzle down. I recognized the gunner’s stance from my months in Iraq. Then he was gone. He could have been sixteen years old or forty. I’d guess young, by how easily he jumped the fence.”

  Warren nodded but Hood saw that he was looking past him. “Not bad, Hood, for a guy with a machine gun firing at him.”

  “I think it jammed.”

  “God and his mysterious ways?”

  “I don’t know anything about God. But my life was on his finger and I don’t know why I’m alive.”

  “Tell me if you get any ideas about that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long have you been up here in the desert?”

  “Six months.”

  “L.A. Internal Affairs speaks highly of you. I think highly of them. Some of them.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  Bomber turned and looked at Hood, then back at the road.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “No, sir. IA is all I know.”

  They turned south on 110th Street, back toward Lancaster.

  “What did you promise Laws, Hood?” asked Warren. “Before he died.”

  “He was dead by the time I could form a thought.”

  “Then what did you promise him when you saw he was dead?”

  “That I’d find who killed him.”

  “Do you believe that, Hood?”

  “Without question.”
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br />   “Good. You are assigned to this case as an officer of Internal Affairs. The fewer who know that, the better for everyone. Your superiors will be advised and tomorrow someone will e-mail you an IA charge number for your time card.”

  Hood thought about this. From his tours in Iraq assigned to NCIS he knew what it was to be hated. And not just by the enemy, but by his own men. “Mr. Warren, I don’t want to work for Internal Affairs.”

  “You made a promise and this is the only way for you to keep it.”

  “You have more experienced investigators.”

  “None with his partner’s blood on his shirt.”

  Someone in front pushed a button, and an overhead light came on. Hood looked at the front of his winter-weight wool-blend shirt and at his shield and he knew it was more blood than could have come from the shrapnel still caught in his cheek.

  “I respect what you did in L.A.,” said Warren.

  “The last thing I wanted to do was take down a fellow deputy.”

  “It was unavoidable for anyone with a functioning moral compass. Hood, I want you with us. I want you watching the watchers, protecting the protectors. There’s no higher calling in law enforcement—you will learn this with time. I’ll have Laws’s package on your desk tomorrow morning.”

  “I don’t have a desk,” said Hood.

  “You do now. It’s at the prison. In a place we unjokingly call the Hole. Report to the warden’s office at seven a.m. His secretary is named Yolanda.”

  Hood watched the dark desert march past the windows, sand blowing upon sand, Joshua trees stiff against the wind.

  “You can say no, Hood. But you can only say it once, and that time is now.”

  Hood was not a planner. He was a man of the present, used to following his heart, which had gotten him mixed results.

  “I’m in.”

  “Know the target and you’ll find the shooter. They meet—beach and wave. I want you to bring me the beach. Bring me Terry Laws. Bring me everything he ever did at this department. He’s ours. He’s mine.”