L. A. Outlaws Page 32

  He visited friends and stayed in a Bakersfield motel that night. He got drunk and slept poorly but rose early for the drive.

  At eleven A.M. Hood was admitted into a fourth-floor room of the Manhattan Beach Marriott Hotel, hungover but ready to face internal affairs. Three of the four men he’d never seen before. Two were scruffy and didn’t look like cops. Another looked like a TV version of the driven prosecutor. One was an assistant sheriff, clearly unhappy about this.

  On the coffee table were two digital recorders. Beside it was a small video camera on a black tripod.

  Hood sat on a floral rattan sofa and looked through the window to the warm, hazy sky. He was exhausted by his own betrayals.

  One of the scruffy cops turned on the voice recorders and the lawyer fixed the camera on Hood then in a strong clear voice established the place and time and players.

  “Deputy Hood, tell us about Wyte,” he said cheerfully.

  44

  Two days later Hood again let himself into the Valley Center barn. Bradley was due in half an hour. He had agreed to be on time for what Hood promised would be an important meeting.

  Hood got the stepladder and slid open the bathroom attic hatch, careful not to tear up the insulation.

  When he turned on the light, he saw that the blanket was thrown to the floor and everything was gone. Everything gone but the blanket and the table.

  He climbed back down and settled the access cover into place and took the ladder back where it belonged.

  Outside in the barnyard he looked out at the massive old oak tree and the pond and the dirt road that separated the property from Betty Little Chief’s.

  He sat on a bench in the shade of the barn and tried to figure out what would happen next, knowing he had little say in it now.

  Then up the dirt road came Bradley’s green 1970 Cyclone GT, slowly but thunderously, the dust rising behind the fat back tires and the Glasspaks spitting up dirt. It made a deliberate turn at the pond, and Hood heard the snarl of the 351 Cleveland in first.

  Behind it was a low-slung Honda Accord, and behind the Honda was a cobalt blue Mitsubishi Lancer, and behind that was an old red-and-white two-tone F-150 agleam within the swirling dust.

  The Cyclone rumbled along and came to a stop twenty feet from Hood. Bradley was at the wheel and the back-seats were piled high with luggage and boxes. The other cars idled in a loose line behind the Cyclone, exhaust stirring the road dust. Two of the other drivers were young men, genuinely tough-looking. Hood couldn’t see much of the truck driver.

  The driver’s-side window went down, and Bradley looked at Hood from behind dark sunglasses.

  “Looks like you’re moving out, Bradley.”

  “That’s because I am.”

  “You going to just drop everything, or finish up school and sports?”

  “More or less.”

  “Where you going?”

  Bradley shook his head. “Places.”

  “Take off those glasses, Bradley.”

  Bradley hesitated then pushed his sunglasses up into his long black hair. “I knew you’d been up there. You didn’t put the insulation back right. Sorry I had to spoil your surprise.”

  “I thought you might do this. I don’t know what your mother wanted for you, but I’ve thought about it a lot. I decided the right thing was to tell you, show you those things in the attic, let you take it from there.”

  “She tried to tell me a couple of times. She never quite got the words out. But really, how hard was it to find that stuff? I had years.”

  Hood looked back at the other cars then at Bradley again. These guys looked too young to be outlaws, but he knew they weren’t too young.

  “The trouble is, you’ll get shot down and you’ll be dead forever,” he said. “It happened to Joaquin and Suzanne and it’ll happen to you.”

  “Do you feel obligated to say that?”

  “Only because it’s true.”

  “Well, Hood, thanks for the counsel.”

  “You can do better, Bradley. The whole world is out there. You can be whatever you want.”

  “I’m already what I want.”

  Hood didn’t answer. The driver in the Honda gunned his engine, then the Lancer and the pickup truck followed suit. Bradley answered with some throttle of his own, checking his buddies in his sideview mirror.

  “It’s a waste of your life and you’ll regret it.”

  “I like you, Hood, but you old guys don’t know shit.”

  “Are you going track down Kick?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Don’t try it in my jurisdiction.”

  Bradley lowered his sunglasses. Then he reached into the passenger’s seat and brushed aside a leather jacket and lifted the jar containing Joaquin’s head. For a moment he held it up in front of his face. The head shifted slowly and the hair lilted and the surface vibrated with the car engine. Then Bradley put it back on the seat and covered it with the jacket. He looked at Hood and nodded and gunned the engine.

  Then the Cyclone trundled around the oak tree, spit some dirt and rocks against the old trunk and lumbered back down the road the way it had come.

  Bradley’s gang followed, engines growling, the first two drivers giving Hood their best killah stares as their cars eased past him.

  The truck came last and paused, and Hood saw that the driver was a girl, red-haired and beautiful.

  She studied Hood for a moment with an expression beyond her years, then the truck accelerated around the oak tree and down the road.

  45

  Hood sat on the dais in Captain Wyte’s fortress in Long Beach. The room was dark except for scattered indicator lights in red and blue, some blinking and some not. Outside the great cranes of the Port of Long Beach hovered over the containers and the powerful lights made the port look as if it were the most important place in all the night.

  He heard the elevator moan. His Glock sat on the table next to one of Wyte’s custom computers, a brushed aluminum masterpiece that shivered with subtle colors even in the near darkness of the room.

  Hood heard the elevator come to a stop, then the door slide open. Wyte stepped from the lighted box, a leather briefcase in one hand and a bottle-sized brown paper bag in the other.

  He went to the wall and turned on the lights low, then adjusted them lower. He had taken just two steps toward Hood when he realized he was being watched and he tried to not react. Hood placed his hand on his pistol as he spoke.

  “I’ve got a weapon in my hand, Captain.”

  Wyte stopped and looked up at him.

  “This is private property and you are trespassing.”

  “You’re a sworn peace officer. Within the Sheriff’s Department you have fewer rights than a convicted rapist.”

  “You’ve been talking to IA.”

  “I have.”

  Wyte nodded to the space around him. “All of this can and will be explained. I look forward to it.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Suzanne started you down this path, no doubt. Something about a computer in the safe house, right?”

  Hood shrugged.

  “Charlie, she should never have gone after blood diamonds.”

  “You shouldn’t have either. All those lives for forty-five grand? What a fuckin’ waste.”

  “You have no idea of the truth.”

  “I know a lie when I hear it.”

  “Why are you here, Charlie?”

  “Just to see the look on your face.”

  “Let’s talk.”

  “Let’s.”

  “Drink?”

  “First, say hello to some friends of mine.”

  One of the IA pack turned up the lights and the others emerged from their respective corners and shadows. Wyte broke for the elevator, but one of the scruffy undercovers shot him straight in the chest with a Taser. Wyte flew backward with a scream and crashed to the floor. The briefcase went one way and the bottle went the other, exploding when it hit. It looked to Hood as
if Wyte had been struck by lightning. The cops disarmed him and cuffed him and dragged him upright and dumped him onto the leather sofa below the dais that Suzanne had described to Hood.

  Hood stood and holstered his sidearm, went down the stairs then through a side door.

  A short hallway led to another room, a windowless, high-ceilinged warehouse filled with neat rows of industrial shelving nearly twenty feet high. Hood saw the big rolling platform ladders like in a home improvement store. Hundreds of televisions, DVD players, computers and peripherals, telephones, faxes, stereo equipment, cameras, musical instruments, coffeemakers, toys—all new and still in their boxes. Near the big roll-up door in the back he saw the pallets heaped with cases of liquor and wine and beer and soft drinks and candy, wrapped in heavy translucent packing plastic. Pallets of tile and car wheels and cigarettes. Pallets of porno magazines and service china and sprinkler heads and hand tools and ready-to-assemble bicycles and swimming pool chlorine and extra-virgin olive oil. Bins of granite and marble and electrical cable and shiny new copper pipe.

  Hood shook his head and walked back out to where the cops were interviewing Wyte. He walked past them looking at no one, took the elevator down and drove home.

  Two mornings later he walked into the Navy Criminal Investigative Service headquarters on Camp Pendleton with Lenny’s list in his pocket. It weighed a thousand pounds.

  Lenny walked in behind him, buzz-cut and ramrod straight, the familiar inexplicable light in his eyes.

  46

  Hood sat on a rock on the bank of the Merced River in Yosemite and tied a fly on for his father. It was early and they were alone. The morning was cool and quiet, and Douglas seemed uninterested in the skills he had mastered and taught to his son and then lost, all within his lifetime.

  Hood finished the knot and watched his father stare out at this new old river. Beyond it the hills were thick with conifers and the sky was a pale blue and there was a plume of smoke from a distant fire.

  “We may as well start with a caddis,” said Hood.

  “By all means.”

  “Thanks for coming out here with me.”

  “I don’t see any reason to stay more than just a few minutes.”

  “All right.”

  They waded into the cold water. Hood pointed to a riffle upstream of them, possibly the same riffle that Douglas had pointed out to him when they first fished this stretch twenty years ago. Hood understood that the saying about something going past in the blink of an eye can be literal, not just figurative.

  Hood stepped back to give his father room to cast, the water powerful against his legs. Douglas held his old handmade rod in the air with his right hand and some slack line in his left. The fly was in the water, skittering in place on the surface at the end of its downstream tether. Beyond this basic posture for casting Douglas appeared flummoxed and looked at his son.

  Hood waded up behind him and took his father’s hands and started the old motion that Douglas had shown him, the rod tip held high and the wrist firm and the elbow forming a fulcrum and the left hand feeding line or hauling it tight. It was an easy rhythm, and up this close Hood could smell his father’s aging body and the after-shave he’d used his whole life, and he could feel the loose coolness of his skin and the lightness of his bones and the reluctant machinery of his joints.

  Douglas shrugged him off with an obscenity and Hood waded toward the bank so he could watch.

  His father looked at him, then took up the cast again, and Hood watched the white fly line loop back and forth overhead in increasing lengths until it shot forward straight and settled and a silky filament unfurled at the last instant, placing the tiny fly at the head of the riffle.

  His father mended the line then smiled at Hood with joy and the memory of joy.

  Standing where this river briefly intersected time, Hood believed that all on Earth was forgiven.

  He smiled back.

  Author’s Note

  History reached out and clenched me as I sat in my fourth-grade class, reading about the great outlaw Joaquin Murrieta. He was allegedly bloodthirsty, and an accomplished horse thief, gambler and killer. Joaquin’s picture made him look certifiably crazy. There were rumors he gave some of his loot to the poor. We crew-cut 1960s fourth graders were supposed to be fascinated by the California missions built by the Spanish, but in my young and impatient mind the missions were stone-cold adobe boredom compared to dashing Joaquin.

  Many years later, when I went to write L.A. Outlaws, I set out to do some more serious research on Joaquin. But I found that the harder I pressed for the truth of his life, the more quickly the “facts” were either complicated, changed, or sometimes simply made to vanish.

  His date and place of birth are disputed.

  The spelling of his name is disputed.

  Some say he was forced into a life of violence by the rape of his young wife, Rosa; others say this was legend only.

  But this much is agreed: The outlaw Joaquin Murrieta was shot down and beheaded in 1853, and such was his notoriety that the head—preserved in a jar of alcohol—was exhibited on tour. It cost a buck to see it. It was possibly lost in the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

  So, the Joaquin you read about in L.A. Outlaws was very much a real man.

  In L.A. Outlaws I’ve compiled the Joaquin myths and added a huge fiction: the existence of his great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter, Allison Murrieta.

  If you want to read more about Joaquin, you can hit the library, the Internet or a good bookstore. I’ve written a piece on him at www.tjeffersonparker.com.

  If you want to read about Allison—his beautiful, brave, audacious outlaw descendant—read the novel you’ve got in your hands.

  It’s all the stuff of legend.

  T. Jefferson Parker

  Fallbrook, California

  2008

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank Steve and Pam Cardamenis for all of their help with the diamonds.

  And Dr. Kurt Popke and Noah Byrne for knowing how to save a life.

  I thank John Austin and Dave Bridgman, brothers of the badge, for their expertise on fast cars and hot guns.

  Thanks to Ken Wilson for the early read.

  And once again, thanks to researcher Sherry Merry-man, SuperSleuth, unlocker of secrets.

  My humble thanks to all of you.

  T. Jefferson Parker

  Read on for an excerpt from

  T. Jefferson Parker’s novel

  THE RENEGADES

  Available now.

  Hood got partnered up with Terry Laws that night, another swing shift in the desert, another hundred and fifty miles of motion on asphalt, another Crown Victoria Law Enforcement Interceptor that would feel like home.

  They walked to the motor yard without talking. Hood was tall and lanky and Laws had a weightlifter’s body, which made his jacket tight across his shoulders. Various sections of the lot were marked by signs bearing the names of fallen deputies, and there were other sections still unnamed.

  He logged the mileage and checked the tires for pressure and wear while Terry checked the fluid levels. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department patrol fleet was old and worn, so they had to check even the obvious. Two days ago the LASD Lancaster station had lost another prowl car engine, more than 260K miles on it, finally succumbing just half a mile short of the yard with a clanging metallic death rattle. The deputy had pushed it to the curb and called a tow.

  Hood drove. He bounced the car from the yard onto the boulevard and he felt the comforting sense of motion that connected him with last night’s motion, which connected him with the motion of the night before, and of the week and the months before that. Motion ruled. He believed that it might lead him to what he was looking for. It had to do with a woman who had died, and a piece of something in him, perhaps soul, that had gone missing.

  It was windy and getting dark, and the desert cold was sharp and weightless as a razor blade. A tumbleweed s
kipped across Avenue J. The overhead traffic light at Division Street shivered on its cables. Snow was coming and Hood had not yet seen snow in this desert.

  He drove and watched and listened as Terry talked about his young daughters—basketball players, good students. Terry’s friends called him Mr. Wonderful because he was two-time L.A. Sheriff’s Department bodybuilding champion, a devoted father, and a Toys for Tots warrior each Christmas season. He had a heroic chin and an open face and a quick smile. He’d made a high-profile arrest on a double homicide almost two years back, which gave him good mojo in the department. He was thirty-nine—ten years older than Hood. Hood had patrolled with Laws before and had thought that something was eating the big man, but Hood believed there was something eating most of us.

  They drove north on Division, east on Avenue I past the fairgrounds. Tuesday nights in winter are slow.

  Hood’s world was the Antelope Valley, north of L.A. The valley is the new frontier, the final part of the county to be heavily developed. It is high desert, ferociously hot and cold, and dry. The cities are booming but not quite prosperous. Thousands of the homes are new. They’re affordable. The cities have nice names, like Palmdale and Rosamond and Pear-blossom and Quartz Hill. There were no antelope in the Antelope Valley until the twentieth century, when some were released so the valley could live up to its name, a California thing, to dream big and fill in the details later. Beyond the Antelope Valley is the vast Mojave Desert.

  “What do you make of AV after six months?” asked Laws.

  “I like that you can see so far.”

  “Yeah, you get the wide-open spaces. It’s not for everybody. You’ll like the snow.”

  Antelope Valley was in fact the Siberia of the Sheriff’s Department, but Hood had asked to be transferred here after some trouble in L.A. He wanted to forget and not be seen. He had been a Bulldog-in-training—LASD homicide—for about four weeks but it didn’t work out. Then he had talked to internal affairs about a superior he mistook for an honest man, and who was soon to stand trial for eight felonies. Hood would be called as a witness by the prosecution, which he dreaded.