L. A. Outlaws Page 2

  I eat some of the food I stocked in the fridge, shower again and put on laundered jeans, cowboy boots and a yoked C&W blouse I shoplifted from a saddlery up in Topanga. I make the local ten o’clock news: The armed robber who calls herself Allison Murrieta has apparently struck again, this time in the Hollywood Hills . . .

  They show the nightshade-covered wall, partially lit by roving spotlights, and the dark driveway. Then they run the popular video clip that shows a woman robbing a McDonald’s. It’s from last year. It’s me all right. Everything on screen is yellow and red and cheery except this babe dressed in black with a gun. I had no idea somebody was shooting video, but these days somebody always is. Luckily I have my professional face on, which means my wig is back in the ponytail and I’m wearing my mask. The mask is made of thick cardboard with black satin glued over it. I cut it to shape, added the satin and one very nice Swarovski crystal for fun. It covers my nose and eyes, cheeks and mouth, ears. Then the news shows an enlarged image from the McDonald’s video, and I note again that with the mask on I look stylish and dangerous. The crystal is near the mouth opening, and it draws your eye, just like Marilyn’s birthmark. The network goes to a commercial for—you guessed it—McDonald’s.

  My next job is at midnight, a little over an hour from now. If it goes as planned, I’ll leave Hollywood with forty-five thousand dollars’ worth of unmounted gem-quality diamonds.

  Here’s the plot: a friend of a friend of a friend’s boyfriend is a diamond district broker, young guy, a real go-getter and they love him at the Caesars’ sports book in Las Vegas and you know how it goes—he’s lucky and he’s smart and then he’s neither. Barry. Takes him two years to run his business into the ground, borrowing, betting, losing. Throw in lots of booze. The bottom line is that Barry is into the Asian Boyz for seventy-five grand and he’s willing to give them four hundred and fifty thousand retail dollars’ worth of very good and very insured diamonds because the cut will be one-tenth when the Boyz manage to fence them. You’ll notice that Barry is cheating the Boyz by almost half. They don’t know that. They’re amateurs and they’re kids. They don’t know that it isn’t easy to lay off that much ice to one guy, all at once.

  I can. The arrangements are made. Forty-five thousand dollars won’t make me rich, but I love diamonds.

  I just have to hit up Barry before he makes it to the Boyz at Miracle Auto Body in City Terrace at one A.M.

  And I know something way more valuable than where he’s going. I know where he’ll be leaving from, and it’s his own damned fault that I do.

  See, Barry is not a good man. He’s Greed, too, just like Rex. In order to pay down his debt, Barry talked his girlfriend Melissa out of ten thousand dollars. But he won’t pay her back. All she gets is excuses. Barry’s not only gone hostile on her, he’s trying to work another girlfriend into their life. I hear that Melissa is a little brokenhearted and a lot pissed off. But Barry’s careless, you know—he treats her like a moron—so it was easy for her to learn the pay-back plan for the Boyz. Then she sent word up the friends’ ladder to see if anyone could help her get her money back. If Barry had any real stones he’d have taken care of his woman. But since he doesn’t, he’s going to have to deal with me. And much more important, he’ll have to deal with the Asian Boyz, who will be unhappy when I steal what he owes them. Barry’s going to have to get his hands on enough diamonds to buy his life not once but twice.

  You make your own luck.

  I don’t leave one thing at the Luxe Summit that I can’t live without.

  I pull up to Barry’s place just before midnight. It’s a modest little stucco off Highland in Hollywood. It’s got stands of giant bird-of-paradise and rhododendron for privacy. The lights are on but the shutters are closed.

  Melissa said that Barry will leave from home. She guaranteed it. Barry’s a homebody, she swore. Home is where he is unless he’s in Las Vegas or at the office down in the diamond district; home is where he loves to be, where he drinks and cooks and watches sports on the tube hour after hour—Melissa could hardly get Barry to drive her to Philippe’s for a French dip. Home also has the safe where Barry will stash the four hundred and fifty thousand retail dollars’ worth of diamonds he’s going to give the Boyz.

  Melissa also said that Barry’s gun stays up in a closet at home because he’s afraid of it. Never carries it.

  Good to know.

  I park across the street two houses down and watch for just a minute. The streetlamps are far-spaced and dim. I’ve cased the place, and I know the giant bird-of-paradise and the rhododendron are my friends. Nobody who carries diamonds for a living should have anything but a low hedge and floodlights out in front of their house. Barry undoubtedly knows this, but an informed fool is still a fool. Barry thinks he can be invisible just by keeping a straight face.

  The walkway to the front door isn’t even lit. From the street you can barely see the front door and that’s good for me. The porch light is on. I listen to the police band radio for a minute or two, just in case some Hollywood Station PD patrol car gets a call nearby, but most of the cops talk on the mobile data terminals now to discourage people like me from listening in.

  At midnight I’m walking down the sidewalk with my satchel—it’s a big leather and brass-studded Hobo I shoplifted from Nordstrom—same side of the street as Barry’s house. When I get to his yard, I cut across the grass in the dark and push through the rubbery rhododendrons.

  I hit the ground and walk on my hands and knees below the shuttered windows, dragging the Hobo along beside me. When I get to the porch, I stand up with my back near the stucco wall, spin my hair into a ponytail and put on the wig. Next I pull the mask from the satchel and put it on, then get Cañonita ready. I’ve got the pepper spray on my belt. I’m not expecting any fight from Barry, but sometimes the chumps surprise you. My heart is pounding like someone just mainlined me with ten cc’s of pure adrenaline.

  I love it.

  I breathe deeply and try to clear my mind. I listen to the soft whap of the bugs against the porch light and the whirring of the air conditioner up on the roof.

  Minutes. Seconds. More minutes.

  By twelve-forty I’m pretty sure that something’s wrong. You don’t leave Hollywood for City Terrace with twenty minutes to spare and your life at stake unless you have major stones, and I know Barry does not.

  I give him five more minutes then put my things back into my bag, walk to the car and stash the gun under the passenger seat.

  I call Barry’s cell number—courtesy of Melissa, of course. She also supplied a picture of him and the make, model and plate number of his car. No answer on the cell, just Barry’s curt little message, like I shouldn’t have interrupted him.

  I wonder if the plans have changed. I wonder how good Melissa’s information really was. I wonder if she might have mixed up one A.M. with one P.M. And I wonder if Barry might have just cut and run.

  I’m outside Miracle Auto Body at eleven minutes after one.

  3

  The shop sits under the paths of both Interstate 10 and 710, surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with five strands of back-slanted barbed wire. It’s loud out here, and it smells like metal and paint and rubber. City Terrace isn’t a city at all—it’s L.A. Sheriff’s turf. That’s good because the Sheriffs are usually spread a little thinner. Usually. And I know a couple of them. On one side of Miracle Auto Body is a tire shop, and on the other is a former junkyard surrounded by a fence with shiny circles of razor ribbon on top.

  I lower a window and listen to the steady roar of the freeway traffic. There are twenty or so busted-up cars out front of the body shop, like they just fell down from the one of the interstates and got in line for their miracle. Some look bad and some you can’t see what’s wrong. Behind them there’s a big concrete-block building with a glass-roofed high bay where the pounding and painting are done.

  When I cased it three nights ago, the lights inside were off and outside security floods were blazingly
on.

  But now the inside lights are on and the yard lights are off.

  I get an odd feeling.

  I know what I should do: put my foot on the brake, put the ’Vette back into gear and leave. Absolutely. No question about it. I have no reason to be here in the first place, other than my curiosity about Barry and the diamonds.

  My diamonds.

  Woman, put your cute little car in gear and drive away. You’ve got 505 horsepower under that shiny yellow hood. Use it.

  I throw the car into drive and go. I feel cagey and proud of my self-control. I take a deep breath, but the steering wheel turns wide right, then sharp left, and I finish the U-turn and stop again outside Miracle. When I roll down the window, the roar of the interstates comes at me from behind the shop. The roar says, Check it out, Allison, we’ll cover you.

  It’s a nice offer.

  I try to figure the risk. If I get caught here by the Sheriffs, they’ll detain me and a warrants check on my license will come back clean because I’ve never been arrested. The ’Vette plates will come up clean because the car is hot but the plates are not. I’ll tell them I was looking for a guy who said he owns this place, we had a late date, you know, my business and not yours.

  But why would the Sheriffs roll up now? It’s late. It’s quiet.

  If there was noise or a complaint, they’d have checked it out hours ago.

  Maybe nothing happened. Maybe the Miracle workers quit work early because it’s a Saturday, forgot the lights, and headed home for the night. Maybe I’m imagining trouble where there isn’t any. Maybe that’s why I’m not in prison.

  Opportunity knocks softly or not at all. It’s my job to listen.

  Just a look in the window.

  I ease the car down the service road shared by Miracle and the tire shop. The darkness closes in a notch. The road is pitted and the Z06 bumps hard. I see the big concrete stanchions of the interstates looming ahead, and the rivers of light made by thousands of headlamps.

  In the parking lot there are six cars: a pimped black Escalade, a black 500 SL, two Accords with fat tires and stingers, Barry’s red Acura—thanks again to Melissa—and an older white panel van. The first four are Asian Boyz rides, but the panel van sticks out like a leg in a cast and I can’t figure it.

  I swing around and park away from the other cars, facing the exit. I turn off the engine, pull on my leather gloves. I think about putting on the mask and wig but don’t—I’m just satisfying my curiosity now, not pulling a job. I’m innocent. I nudge the door closed with my thigh, palm Cañonita and walk toward the building like I own the place, which is how I walk everywhere.

  I pass through a sliding chain-link gate to get in. The gate is open. That odd feeling comes back.

  Well, I’ve been warned.

  But I think about what’s inside. My diamonds.

  I start up the steps to the landing and the front door. Light spills from inside. I take long, quiet steps, quiet as I can be. At the door I look through the dirty glass to the lobby and see brown carpet, a long counter, the back end of a computer monitor, a wall with a girlie calendar and a hallway leading to the bay in back. The counter has a lift door which is open and up. Behind the counter there’s an open office door, and I can see the desk and chair inside, a steel file cabinet thrown open, another chair tipped over and lying in the doorway. I check for surveillance cameras but don’t see any.

  I look back at the cars waiting for bodywork. There’s an elevated steel catwalk around the building, and I follow it one quiet step at a time. I use the safety railing to steady myself. The sound of the freeways presses in close.

  The windows are low and cranked open in the summer heat. Up on my toes I can see into the bay. It’s one big room, divided into side-by-side workstations by disposable paper drapes affixed to railings with sliding hooks, an industrial version of hospital privacy curtains. Some of the workstations have cars in them, in various stages of repainting. The color of each car is the color on the curtain around it, bright reds and blacks and silvers. Big industrial fans sway the sheets. No cameras that I can see.

  A dead guy lies by a red Honda. He’s still got a painter’s breathing apparatus over his face.

  Twenty feet away in the direction of the lobby are two more bodies, apparently men and apparently dead. One has a pistol in his hand. The other’s gun is a few feet away.

  Another fifteen feet toward the lobby lie two other guys.

  I stare at each one of the men again for a few seconds, looking for movement but seeing none. Just the lilting of the paper curtains.

  I walk down to the next window. My heart is in my throat and the interstates are roaring in my ears. Other than that I feel a clarity that overrules fear.

  From here I can see back farther toward the lobby, and I find exactly what I expect to. Two more men down near a yellow Thunderbird, their M243 SAW machine guns strapped around their necks.

  Then, just inside the door leading to the lobby there are two more bodies. They’ve fallen over each other. A Mossberg military combat shotgun rests a few inches from one of the outstretched hands. The same guy has a red canvas backpack still clutched in the other.

  One more man is sprawled faceup and arms out a few feet away. He’s wearing a suit and tie. It’s Barry.

  Ten people.

  Ten and out.

  That’s a lot of dead men.

  I lean against the building and look up at the towering overpasses and their halos of headlights. I breathe deeply and try to see things for what they are. I look through the window again for security cameras: nothing. I look to the rear of the bay, to the metal roll-up door where they bring the vehicles in and out. It’s closed. I see the control panel for that door, the big red button and the big black one.

  Then I go back to the front door and try it. Locked.

  I get a feeling that isn’t quite a thought. Something to do with the guns inside and the locked front door.

  Back under the second window I squat in the darkness and wonder how loud the firefight must have been. It looks to have been brief by the way the bodies fell. Nobody got very far. I try to gauge the roar of the interstates and imagine the blasting and popping of the pneumatic wrenches of the tire shop nearby, and I figure, sure, it’s possible, you could have a neat little ten-man shoot-out here in this industrial wasteland under the freeways, and unless you had a customer waiting in the lobby or a bum in the Dumpster out back or a Sheriff ’s patrol just happen by, nobody would even hear it. The whole thing could have been over in a minute.

  I can see that.

  But I can’t see the victors walking out the front door and locking it behind them.

  And I can’t see them scrambling to get out ahead of the back roll-up door as it rattled down.

  And I can’t see them climbing out the window right above me, either.

  I can’t see the victors leaving all that hardware behind. Gangsters don’t leave good weapons lying around. It just doesn’t happen.

  The bottom line is I can’t see any victors at all. I don’t think anyone got away. Which makes me think of Barry’s diamonds.

  My diamonds.

  I climb through the window.

  4

  Inside the fans whir and the paper curtains sway and rattle.

  I move quickly to the red backpack, unzip the main compartment and look inside. For being worth four hundred and fifty thousand dollars at your local Zales, the parcels are small and trim. The gemstone papers are the size of business cards, white and crisp and held together with rubber bands. Each is lined with lint-free blue gem paper. The contents of every paper is handwritten by the grader. The diamonds are loose and brilliant. Most are half-carat, a few smaller and several bigger. One is a mondo two-carat beauty that takes away what is left of my breath. Most are round-cut, but flipping through, I see some marquises and pears and squares. In this light I can’t judge quality. I’m looking down at scores of marriage proposals, engagements, anniversaries, Valentine’s Days, a
pologies and seductions—and thousands of hours of sex, guaranteed by these stones. I’m looking down at treasures found in dark, filthy Transvaal mines, plucked by slaves whose only rewards will be poverty and early death. No wonder they’re so valuable.

  Great job, Allison. You figured it right.

  I stash the parcels and zip up the backpack, sling it over my shoulder and stand. Everywhere I look there’s either paint or blood, and I can smell them both. I palm Cañonita and quickly tour the battlefield, walking fast and not stopping.

  The two dead gunmen beside me are Asian Boyz. God knows how many holes in them.

  The next two are Mara Salvatrucha—MS-13—an L.A. Central American gang so ridiculously violent the FBI has an entire task force dedicated just to them. These are the guys with the machine guns. MS-13 always has good weapons because the U.S. supplied the Salvadoran con tras for almost a decade and most of the hardware is still down there. So they bring it back up here. These dead Salvadorans are small-bodied men, young, their arms covered with MS-13 tats.

  The two dead gunmen fifteen feet away are Asian Boyz.

  Farther in are two more MS-13.

  Now I’m to the dead guy I saw first, the one who never had time to get his painter’s mask off. He’s Asian. The mask has slid to one side. He looks about sixteen years old. I have a special affection for sixteen-year-old boys. He’s been shot up badly, which means the Salvadorans probably got themselves killed by using all their ammo on a car painter.

  I stop for just a second and look back on the trail of bodies and blood.

  You don’t have to be a cop to read this mess. First, the Boyz changed the meeting time from one A.M. to earlier, sometime during regular business hours. Why? Just basic security, to keep desperate Barry from trying something stupid. Barry tries something stupid anyhow—he brings his payment as agreed, but he’s cut in some Salvadorans to cancel his debt the permanent way, and probably save himself a few diamonds. Barry comes to the Boyz alone and they retire to the office and close the door. A minute later MS-13 arrives in the big white van. The Salvadorans don’t know anything about an office, so two of them just go straight to the heart of the matter and start shooting up the painter. Two of the Boyz take them out, but two more Salvadorans—the smart ones with the firepower—come up from behind and the Boyz go down. Then the last two Asian guns try to come in quietly from the office. They even take a second to lock the front door, figuring they’ll trap the invaders. They make their appearance with Barry in tow, and between two machine guns, the combat 12-gauge and a machine pistol, everybody’s dead in four seconds.