The Renegades: A Charlie Hood Novel Page 6

  —Don’t tell me you have one of these, too, I joke.

  “So Herredia holds the huge pistol on my chest, and pulls the trigger. The action of the Desert Eagle is tremendously loud, and I hear every machined part click and clunk into place until the hammer drives the firing pin into the empty cylinder. Terry hits the deck and the old man points the shotgun at him, cackling. Herredia is smiling, so I smile back.

  —No, I don’t own one of those, he says.

  —And that’s not all, I say.

  “I help Terry up and feel the trembling in his hand. I ask him to wheel the suitcases over and put them on the big desk. He rolls them over and has trouble getting the retractable handles back down. He’s beyond nervous now; he’s just plain scared. When he gets them on the desk in front of Herredia he unzips them and folds open the tops. Herredia looks into them, then back up at Terry, then at me.

  —We recovered this two days ago at a crime scene near Lancaster, I tell him. We arrested the man who killed your friends. He was armed. There was a struggle, which came out in our favor. But it didn’t seem right that your hard-earned money should sit in a property room in Los Angeles, so we brought it back to you. It’s all there, except for seventy-two hundred dollars. Two pounds of your five-dollar bills were found in the killer’s vehicle and therefore booked as evidence. Another pound was left behind in the luggage to form an evidentiary link from the suspect to the couriers. Not one dollar more has been lost. We weighed it. Twice. There are three hundred and forty-seven thousand, eight hundred dollars.

  “So, Herredia sits back and watches me from behind that heavy brow. I turn to see the old man puffing on a cigar, the shotgun across his lap.

  —What do you want? asks Herredia.

  —We want to be your couriers, sir, I tell him. We want to make this drive every Friday night, and deliver your money to you. We’ve got our own vehicles and guns, uniforms and badges, and our contacts, as necessary. We are American law enforcement officers in good standing. All we ask is to be treated with respect and to be paid four and a half points. I suspect that’s a point and a half higher than your former employees made, but they were obviously not competent. Look how well they protected what belongs to you. We, as you see, are extremely competent. We’re worth the extra pay, for punctuality, dependability and the security of having your assets handled by sworn law enforcement professionals.

  —You murdered them and took my money.

  —We arrested the murderer and he’ll be convicted in a court of law.

  “Herredia nods. I note a thin shaving of white around El Tigre’s big black irises. I wonder what it means. He raises his right hand and points at us, then circles the finger in the air.

  “We turn clockwise, in the direction of Herredia’s finger. I listen for the sound of the Desert Eagle being lifted and aimed, and know that if I hear it, it will be the last sound I’ll ever hear. I keep turning—walls, windows, the old man with the stub of the cigar in his mouth and both hands on the shotgun. When I come full circle I meet El Tigre’s eyes again and I see something light and new in them.

  —I will pay you four points, says Herredia. You will deal only with Avalos in Los Angeles. I will calculate the points and pay you here, in Mexico. Avalos will always know exactly what you have when you leave L.A. If you are ever short or late, your lives are over. If you bring someone else into my world, your lives are over. If you ever speak my name to anyone but Avalos, your lives are over.

  “I take a deep breath and nod solemnly. I’ve just closed a deal that will earn each of us around seven-plus grand a week for eight hours of work. That’s thirty grand a month, tax free, month after month after month. And if things go the way I figure, if Herredia’s bloody cartel continues to prevail in the wars, and its market share of the U.S. craving for drugs continues to rise, the paycheck will only get bigger and bigger. I look at Laws. He’s pale, but he’s smiling.

  “Then Herredia stands, and in one motion he tosses the Daiwa power-assist reel into the air over my head and shoots it with the Desert Eagle. The sound wave alone almost knocks me over. Bits of metal rain down on my head. There are holes in the ceiling. My ears are roaring but through it I can hear Herredia laughing, and the old man laughing behind him.

  —You bring me a reel for fags! yells Herredia.

  “Laws’s face is bruised and his eyes are wide but I can see that he’s deliriously relieved, almost happy. Herredia slides the fifty-caliber automatic into a holster on his belt, and points to the door.”

  The boy looks at me with a skeptical frown. He says nothing for a few moments, then he shakes his head and the frown melts into a smile.

  “Sweet,” he says. “Thirty a month for a Mexican holiday once a week.”

  “Depending on what you consider a holiday.”

  “You’ve got rocks, Coleman. And luck.”

  “We stayed for dinner that night,” I say. “Herredia insisted. The old man joined us. His name was Felipe. The dining room in the house was nothing like Herredia’s office. The walls were adobe brick, with exposed beams of Douglas fir running the span of the ceiling. The floor was walnut, spar-varnished to a thick resinous glow. The window casements were walnut, too, and during the dinner they stood open for the warm Baja air. It was the best Mexican food I’ve ever had—ceviche tostados and chile rellenos and carnitas and bowls of pico de gallo.

  “We drank California wine and Mexican tequilas. After dinner we went to the poolside cabana where four young women were waiting. They were beautiful and expensively dressed, relaxed and eager for conversation.

  “When I woke up late the next morning, my companion brought me strong café con leche and a copy of the Los Angeles Times. Her name was Meghan, a California girl. She missed Redondo Beach. My ears were still ringing from the Desert Eagle. But I saw that I had died and gone to heaven, and I couldn’t wait to do it again and again and again.”

  8

  Laurel Laws opened the door of her San Fernando home that morning and Hood held up his shield. She looked at it while Hood looked at her: a twenty-something blonde in a black satin robe over long black pajamas tucked into shearling boots against the cold. She held a big mug of coffee. Her fingers were slender and her diamond was large. Standing beside her was a black pit bull with a dinged face.

  Hood followed her down the foyer, past a living room and a dining room. The home was ranch-style, open and light, with cool olive walls, trimmed with crisp white moldings, and pale maple floors. The paint and flooring looked new. There were paintings on the walls and wooden shutters on the windows. The dog stayed on her left, nails clicking on the hardwood floors. Laurel said the dog had been rescued by Terry, and his name was Blanco.

  The kitchen itself was a darker green, and the appliances were all new and white. An interior wall was partially demolished, the drywall stripped off and the studs exposed.

  “Remodels never end,” she said.

  She pushed a button on an elaborate contraption that ground and brewed and dispensed for Hood a cup of very good coffee.

  They sat in a sunny breakfast room. She said Terry was a beautiful man, inside and out, and that her heart was fully broken. They’d been introduced by friends. At that time, she’d been divorced for two years from an abusive producer. Terry and his first wife had divorced four years before she met him.

  “You know why divorce is so expensive, don’t you?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Because it’s worth it.”

  Now, after eighteen months of married happiness with Terry, and finally closing on this little piece of paradise, she had to start over.

  “The house is just the house,” she said. “Come out here.”

  She and Blanco led Hood outside and Laurel showed him the stable and the barn and the arena and the hot walker. It wasn’t a large property, she said, just over a half acre, but it was zoned for horses and horses were what she needed. They’d lived here for only six months. It was a foreclosure. They had purchas
ed it for nine hundred thousand dollars and it had already been appraised at a million one. Thank God, Terry had taken out a mortgage protection policy that would pay off 100 percent of the loan now that he was dead. She said that although she worked part-time at the Valley Equestrian Center, she didn’t make enough to pay the mortgage and live on.

  Hood saw that there were two horses, a mare and a gelding. Laurel gave them carrots and kissed them. “My children,” she said to them. Hood felt invisible. Laurel took a call on her cell phone and walked away and Hood looked at the horses and remembered riding with his father through the rough Bakersfield farmland—the heat and the dust, the oil pumpers and dirt roads, the spring surrounded by willows and cottonwoods—and the happiness that often gave him. Laurel snapped her phone shut and walked back over and told Hood she had to go.

  He followed her back toward the house and asked her if Terry had been afraid or worried, if he had had threats or money problems. No, she said, Terry was a simple man, and a good one. He asked her if Terry had been drinking more than usual and she said he never had more than two drinks a night—he was so into fitness. Hood asked her if Terry was happy and Laurel stopped and looked at him.

  “He was happy.”

  “Did he mention the name Londell Dwayne?”

  “Yes, of course. Terry arrested him then tried to take care of the man’s dog while he was in jail. The dog bit Terry and got away and Londell blamed him for the dog getting lost.”

  “Did Terry say that Londell had threatened him?”

  “Londell did threaten him.”

  She gave Hood the names and numbers of Terry’s banker and doctor, and the last three months of telephone bills for their home number and for Terry’s cell.

  Driving out, Hood noted the late-model Range Rover and the silver Mercedes Kompressor convertible and the red F-250 extended cab with the camper shell.

  He thought it was odd that Laurel had not asked any questions about Terry. Not one.

  ADAM GRIMM WAS the personal banking consultant who had worked with Mr. and Mrs. Laws. The branch was on San Fernando Boulevard. Hood identified himself and offered Grimm an LASD department number to verify his assignment to the murder of Deputy Laws. Grimm made the call and asked a few questions, hung up. Then he tapped at his computer keyboard, adjusted the monitor, and looked at Hood.

  “Terry and Laurel Laws did a lot of business with us,” he said. “They have two savings accounts, two checking accounts and a first mortgage with us. They have a stock portfolio offered through this bank, two IRAs and a Keogh. They have a line of credit and two credit cards issued through us. What do you want to know?”

  He gave Hood the savings and checking account balances—and Hood saw that they were all in line with the earnings of a sheriff’s deputy and a part-time equestrian center employee.

  He saw, too, that the stock portfolio had been opened a year ago for fifty thousand dollars and was now worth fifty-one thousand, and that the retirement accounts had been rolled over and were in line with earnings. The line of credit was untouched and neither credit card had ever carried a balance.

  “They are…I mean, he was a very scrupulous client,” said Grimm. “They watched their money closely.”

  “Why two savings accounts? Why two checking accounts?”

  “That’s not uncommon, Deputy Hood. Autonomy. Independence. The accounts were held jointly, so either one could get balances, make transfers, write checks.”

  “Did any of those accounts apply to an investment property, or a business?”

  “No. They are personal accounts.”

  Hood asked for the balance on the home mortgage and Grimm clicked away on the keyboard. It took a while. When he said three hundred thousand dollars, Hood was intrigued.

  “Mrs. Laws told me they bought their place for nine hundred thousand dollars,” he said. “So they came up with six hundred thousand dollars down.”

  Grimm tapped again, found the loan history, and nodded. “Six hundred and fifteen thousand.”

  “On a combined income of under a hundred grand a year.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they close an account to get that money?”

  “Not one of ours.”

  “Sell a property?”

  He tapped and tapped more. He apologized for the slow computer. He stared at the screen.

  “Yes. Mrs. Laws sold a town home in Studio City. She realized two hundred thousand dollars from the sale, it says here on the loan apps.”

  “Leaving four hundred fifteen thousand to go for the down.”

  “Correct.”

  “Did Terry sell a property also?”

  “No. He was renting.”

  Grimm frowned at the screen as if it were misleading him. “There’s a photocopy of the down payment check. It’s drawn on the Pearblossom Credit Union, and signed by Terry Laws. Maybe there was an inheritance involved, or some other instrument.”

  “Is there a copy of Terry’s ten-forty with the loan application?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry I can’t show it to you or divulge any information from it. Federal, you know.”

  “If I were to see it, would it explain to me where he got four hundred and fifteen thousand dollars?”

  “If you were to see it, it would explain nothing of the kind. But you will not see it here in my office.”

  “Thank you,” said Hood.

  THE PEARBLOSSOM CREDIT UNION was new, small and neat. The vice president was a slender brunette named Carla Vise. Framed pictures of a cat faced out from her desk. Through her office window Hood could see a vacant lot filled with twisted Joshua trees and Spanish dagger. Hundreds of plastic shopping bags flapped and pressed against the windward side of a chain-link fence. The day was cool and bright.

  Carla offered Hood jelly beans from a plastic bowl and he took a few to be polite. She eyed him over a pair of reading glasses as he asked her what she knew about Mr. Laws’s down payment on his home. She told Hood that Terry Laws was one of her favorite customers, and that she couldn’t believe that he had been murdered, right here in Lancaster. She excused herself, then came back a moment later with a thick green file folder. She dabbed an eye with a wadded pink tissue.

  “Yes, he wrote the down payment check on his personal account here,” said Carla. She opened the folder and started fanning through the pages. “High Country Escrow.”

  “Do you know where he got the six hundred and fifteen thousand dollars?”

  She was already nodding. “Two hundred thousand dollars is what they made when they sold Laurel’s place in Studio City. And the balance came from Mr. Laws’s trust.”

  Hood’s nerves stirred. “This is the first I’ve heard about a trust.”

  “Oh really? Build a Dream? He started it in the summer of 2007, a charitable trust. It raises money for Southern California children living below the poverty line. Terry raised a lot of that money from the Sheriff’s Department—rank-and-file donations. You law enforcement people are generous. I think it’s because you see so much poverty and crime. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”

  “So you handle this trust?”

  “We have the trust account. I opened it for him. And Mr. Laws transferred four hundred thousand dollars from his charitable trust to his checking account the day before he made the down payment on his home. He got a good deal on the place, I might add. I was actually the one who told him about it. We had foreclosed and we sold low, as lenders sometimes do.”

  Hood was impressed that Terry Laws had raised at least four hundred grand for poor children in less than a year and a half. It was about six times his annual salary as a deputy.

  “Isn’t it unusual for someone to withdraw a large amount of money from a trust, then deposit it in a personal account?”

  “He drew it as salary, according to the terms of the trust.”

  “He paid himself.”

  “As sole trustee he could do whatever he wanted. But to be honest—yes. It was unusual. I told him it was unusu
al. He was sitting right there in the same chair that you are. In uniform. And he told me that he was raising money much faster than he thought he would. Most of it was done online, he said, but the deputies were also setting up tables in front of supermarkets, giving out information and taking donations. The trust was just really taking off. But he needed a home—he was throwing away his rent money. Terry said the four-hundred-plus thousand dollars wouldn’t take much time to replenish. And he said that he and Mrs. Laws had already arranged a charitable remaindered trust that would deed their home to Build a Dream upon their deaths. And of course, by then it would be many times more valuable than four hundred thousand. He was good to his word about replenishing Build a Dream. The very next week…”

  She went to her computer now and tapped away at the keyboard. “Yes. He deposited $7,720 back into Build a Dream. And the week after that, another $7,200. And so on. Always a Monday, unless we were closed. The trust stood at one hundred and forty thousand dollars the day that Mr. Laws died. He made a deposit the day before.”

  Hood did the math and figured the trust should have been up to $180,000. He wondered if forty of it might have found its way into the Laws’s never-ending remodel.

  “Always cash?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you report the deposits?”

  “No, sir. The legal limit is ten thousand—we must report anything higher. Below that is perfectly legal.”

  She tried to muster a frank look for Hood, but then she dropped her gaze to the desktop for a long moment. “And to be honest, yes, I wondered at the amounts, their size and frequency, and the fact that they were never over ten thousand. I wondered if something…not right was going on. But I didn’t wonder long. Terry was the law. And I very much wanted to believe in the children’s trust, established by a cop, and supported by law enforcement throughout California. When I looked at Deputy Laws, it was easy to believe. His…Well, everything about him said honesty and goodness. I saw him in the paper with the elf cap on at Christmas. And I thought, well, if he overpays himself with funds he’s raised, okay. It’s temporary. He’s earned it. He deserves a nice home and it will go into the trust someday. He’s upholding the law and bringing in money for the poor. Now he’s dead.”