T Parker - L. A. Outlaws

“I’ve been calling all night.”

“My good night’s sleep in Torrance just about got me killed. Lupercio came a few inches from cutting my arm off with that machete. Where were you when I needed you?”

“On patrol. I drove the Residence lot at six o’clock and once again every hour until midnight. I knocked on the door of your room each time. Where were you ?”

“Never saw the old black Lincoln?”

Silence then and I wonder what Hood is thinking.

“I got there at twelve-thirty,” I say. “Lupercio pulled in right behind me. I ran through a fence to get away. He didn’t follow me in. He was there, waiting.”

“Goddamn, Suzanne.”

“Goddamn is right. I ran a mile barefoot on streets and sidewalks. I jumped a million fences. Everything hurts.”

“Have you checked your car for a location transponder? That’s a-”

“I know what it is, Hood.”

I can’t tell him how many cars I’ve stolen and driven since Miracle Auto Body, that you’d need a team of confederates just to keep those cars in transponders. This thought brings me a very brief smile. And I also can’t tell him that I checked Barry Cohen’s backpack for a transponder, too-just before I boosted the F- 150 in San Berdoo after I’d lost Lupercio and his lame-ass Lincoln at the signal at Eastern in City Terrace.

“Yes,” I say. “I checked.”

“How?”

“Got on my back, crawled under and looked.”

“Are you driving the Corvette?”

“You can’t crawl under that car. No. My old Sentra.”

“What about your purse, or a briefcase, or something you carry with you?”

“No transponders that I know of. When could he have put one in place, Hood? I saw him for a total of four seconds that night and we were never less than twenty feet apart.”

“You have to look again. Look everywhere again. They’re small now.”

I take a deep breath and let it out. Can’t believe how tired I am. “Hell’s bells.”

“Did you tell Ernest where you were?”

“No.”

“I’ll come get you.”

“I don’t know about you, Hood. Every time I see you, Lupercio shows up. Every time I see Lupercio, you’re in the picture, too. That really bothers me.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Then how did he know about the Residence Inn?”

“Hell, Suzanne.”

“Maybe someone you work with-your boss or something.”

“No.”

“Easy for you to say. But I was the one looking up at that machete. By the way, Lupercio’s got a new hairstyle. It’s a buzz.”

I hang up and call in for my messages. Ernest has called twice with full reports on how the boys are doing. Bradley caught a six-foot barrel at Oceanside, got tubed and came out. Jordan caught four fish off the pier. The dogs are fine. The Sequoia is leaking oil. Ernest misses me.

Hood has called ten times in the last twelve hours. I hear his voice go from gently polite to annoyed to worried to fearful.

Maybe he really is who I thought he was. Maybe I have him figured wrong.

Same way he’s figured me.

Hood stood in the Residence Inn parking lot and looked where the chain-link fence had been. The flattened mesh lay a hundred feet into the adjacent lot along with three ripped-up stanchions.

Torrance PD had taped off the area sometime during the night, but they were gone now, a little after sunrise. They’d made no arrests, had not identified the vehicle involved. They wrote it up as vandalism.

On the sun-faded asphalt Hood saw the tire marks in front of the cement parking bumper, and the broken headlight glass behind it. There was another set of tire marks-the kind left by heavy acceleration or heavy braking-and these were set more widely apart and the tires were fatter than the first set. Hood pictured the big black Lincoln bearing down on Suzanne Jones, whose little Sentra had already lost a headlight. Too bad she wasn’t in the yellow Corvette. He had the thought that Suzanne Jones had used up a lifetime of good luck in the few days he’d known her. He called her again but she didn’t answer.

Hood spent an hour in his temporary homicide cubicle, writing an affidavit for an arrest warrant for Lupercio Maygar. It was his first warrant request and he knew the wording had to be right. He was a slow but accurate writer and when he was done with the statutory page he read it to himself and was convinced that the judge would issue.

He sat in the empty courtroom as the judge read the request in chambers. He called Suzanne again but she wouldn’t pick up. He was starting to think that he couldn’t help her if she wouldn’t let him. He regretted what they had done in Laguna but wanted to do it again. A few minutes later a bailiff walked the signed and stamped warrant to Hood and said, Good luck, I hope you stick this guy.

Hood sat across from Melissa Levery in a coffee bar on Gower. It was noon by now, but they got a corner table in the crowded little room. Melissa was a fair-skinned and dark-haired young woman with a pretty face. She was heavily made up in spite of what appeared to be a nearly flawless complexion. Her eyes were green and remarkably beautiful. She had wiped away a tear when Hood sat down, but now, several minutes into the story of her poor treatment by Barry, something hard and eager had come into her eyes.

She told him that Barry had owed money to the Wilton Street Asian Boyz, and that he wanted to pay them in diamonds, which of course were insured. The Boyz were happy because Barry totally misrepresented the value of stolen diamonds. Barry got the idea of cutting in another gang for less payment and he knew some Salvadorans-a rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul thing and that was pure Barry because he was smart but not real smart. Story of his life.

Melissa told Hood about the money she’d lent him and he’d promptly lost at the Caesar’s Sports Book-ten thousand dollars of a Roth IRA she’d earned as a Lancôme rep-and the way Barry thought he could run her off and cancel his debt to her by taking up with other girls and he’d done just that, taken up with them. This was where Hood had seen the hardness in her eyes. She began describing the girls. One had been a friend. Hood liked the way she talked on without a comma because it bode well for his main purpose here. He wanted to get her back to the bigger picture, but it was a hard thing to be subtle about.

“How much did he owe the Asian Boyz?”

“Seventy-five grand.” She took another sip of the elaborate coffee drink that she had ordered a few minutes ago. She had been drinking one when Hood got there, so this was at least her second.

“You told me the rocks were worth forty-five grand on the street. So Barry was underpaying them, dramatically.”

“The Boyz didn’t know that. And they sure didn’t know they were going to get ripped off by MS-13. I read the papers. There were more people there than Barry thought would be there. It was a bigger thing than he was ready for.”

She looked down now at the cheap wooden table, scratched at the surface with a manicured nail, exhaled. “Barry didn’t deserve that. He was basically a good guy. He was Barry. He didn’t deserve what happened.”

“He stole from you and betrayed his partners and brought this upon himself,” said Hood. And he thought that Barry had set up five Wilton Street Asian Boyz to be murdered by Mara Salvatrucha. Maybe Barry wasn’t sure about numbers, but he was sure about outcome.

“But he didn’t deserve to die for that.”

Hood wanted to explain that according to the rules of the Asian Boyz and Mara Salvatrucha, Barry certainly did deserve to die. And he’d walked into that world, full of bluster and bad ideas. To Hood the definition of a fool is he who can’t see consequences. But none of this would help Melissa.