T Parker - L. A. Outlaws

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.”