T Parker - L. A. Outlaws

I take my time sweeping the diamonds back into their papers. My heart is beating hard and I have this terrible sense of doom and defeat inside me. I hate this man and everything he says because in my heart I know he’s right.

“Fourteen men have died for these diamonds,” I say.

“Yes.”

“Not counting the ones who died in the mines, searching them out.”

“Yes again.”

“How can I take less than what they paid for them?”

“That sounds noble but really it’s just sentimental. The stones are only worth what they are worth.”

“I like them,” I say. “I’ve become attached to them. Maybe I’ll have some set for people I love. Maybe have some set for me. Maybe just enjoy them for what they are rather than selling them. Some things are more precious unsold.”

The look on Guy’s face is authentic disappointment. He exhales softly but keeps his cool blue eyes on mine.

“We all know that Lupercio is going to find you, Ms. Jones. ”

Of course Guy saw Lupercio and me on TV. Half of L.A. saw Lupercio and me on TV. I didn’t think someone would use that story to rip me off. Honor among thieves? What a pitiful notion.

“Maybe he’ll pay me a better price,” I say.

“He’s going to kill you and take them. But the diamonds aren’t why he’s going to kill you. You can hand all of those over to him, and a hundred thousand dollars in cash, and give him your beautiful young body, then move to another state, and change your name and your appearance, and he’ll still kill you.”

“Why?”

“Because you saw him. Maybe you described him to the police artist. Or, maybe someone else saw him and described him to a police artist. Maybe. But Lupercio is free now because he doesn’t allow people to see him. I’m not trying to frighten you for yourself or your family. I’m not trying to negotiate with you. I’m not trying for a better price. I can get a better price just by waiting.”

“Can you stop him?”

“He can be influenced.”

“If you get your price.”

“Which is a fair price.”

“In exchange for allowing you to steal my diamonds you influence Lupercio?”

“Correct.”

So, Guy is basically what KFC and Burger King and Taco Bell and all those other businesses were when I was a kid-a low-wage employer with a feeble benefits package and the proud ability to save me from terrors that he himself will bring upon me. They’re all poverty vendors with protection rackets on the side. I swear for just a second that Guy looks like that damned Victor they brought in from the East to take Ruby’s job at KFC.

I’m also pretty sure that Guy’s swank laptop is the one I saw on the coffee table in the Marina del Rey safe house. I’ve never seen one like that-not in a store, not in an ad, not in a movie, never. So I think Guy is not only a cop but one of Hood’s bosses. A thought: in Marina del Rey he was downstairs outfitting my Sentra with a locator for Lupercio to follow, while I was upstairs making a video to lure Lupercio into a trap. A fucking cop, helping Lupercio kill the only witness who can put him near Miracle Auto Body that bloody night. And now trying to steal her diamonds for a song. A bad song.

Cute.

Too bad I can’t tell Hood about it.

It would all be kind of funny, if I didn’t have my life to consider. And the lives of my boys. Ernest, too. Even my students. I teach a mean hour of history to eighth graders for nine months a year, and believe me, they need some tiny sense of the past. They need to know that there was life before cell phones. They need to be relieved of their overstimulated, overscheduled, overamplified, overcom mercialized, overrated, overpandered-to present. But a classroom hour a day isn’t enough to accomplish that, and teaching is not a way for me to get ahead in life. I took this extra job partly for my family, though I’ll admit it was mostly for me. I took it because I was tired of following the orders of corporate drones and compromising with district fools. And I took it because the blood of Joaquin runs through me. It pulls at me like a hand from the grave. I did not become an outlaw to get more laws to live by.

“I’m keeping the diamonds, Guy. Get Anthony back in here. I’m gone.”

“Let me be the first to say good-bye.”

“Say good-bye to yourself. You don’t impress me.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“You don’t have enough balls to impress me. You just rent them from Lupercio.”

He offers me a dull smile.

I stand as Angel and his ward come back through the invisible door. Wise Angel senses disaster.

“May I have a few private words with Guy?” Angel asks.

“Give me the truck keys,” I say.

“Why, Laura? I’ll just be a minute.”

I look at Guy. “I can’t take another minute of this.”

“Of course, Laura. Of course.” Angel hands me the hood.

“Is there a navigation unit in the truck?” asks Guy.

“There is none, Guy,” says Angel. “I can still read a map.”

“Escort Laura to the truck,” says Guy to Rorke. “Confirm Anthony’s statement.”

I give Rorke a hateful stare as I put the hood back on. He cinches up the ties behind my head and I feel the knot go tight. He walks me out with firm pressure on my arm and beeps me in to the truck. He guides me into the passenger’s seat. I’m sure he’s looking at the dashboard to confirm that there’s no screen, and I hope he doesn’t bother to look under the seat for my portable. Thank God it’s small and black. I hear the driver’s door open and the clink of keys as he slips one into the ignition, then closes the door. I hit the door locks and give Rorke a blind wave, then turn on the radio and crank the volume. I give Rorke a moment to get inside and lose interest. A minute later I’ve got my hand around the GPU and I push the current location save button. I’ve practiced this in the dark and I can do it with either hand.

Then I lean my head back against the rest and try to figure out what to do about Guy.

On his first tour Hood spent time at the “Baghdad Tennis Club,” a Green Zone facility with a single court made from Tigris River clay and patrolled by men with machine guns. The Chinese-made tennis balls were pressureless and heavy as rocks. But the Iraqis love tennis almost as much as soccer. The play usually took place during the evenings, under the soft hiss of the Green Zone palms.

Hood was a steady player, having been number two on his Bakersfield High School team. He enjoyed having a racket in his hand again. He had a big forehand that was somewhat mitigated by the yellow Tigris clay, though sometimes the gravel composition gave his shots some horrendously advantageous bounces. He didn’t mind hitting with the Iraqi youngsters just learning to play.

The club was often visited by Nasir al-Hatam, Iraq’s number-one player. Amid the rubble and chaos of Baghdad Nasir was trying to get an Iraqi Davis Cup team together. Hood could rally with him, but in games the Iraqi’s serve and his deep, steady ground strokes easily did Hood in. Al-Hatam was good-natured and generous with his time, and he became the club pro, giving lessons to American soldiers, who played in combat boots and fatigues.

Hood remembered all of this as he drove away from Officer Steve Ruiz’s funeral that Saturday afternoon in Bakersfield, one week after the shootings in Madeline Jones’s courtyard. The palms lining the cemetery road looked like the Baghdad palms, and the cooling evening had the same rosy desert light. And Steve Ruiz and Nasir al-Hatam had looked very much alike-tall and dark-haired and slender, with a warm smile and kind eyes. At least that was how Ruiz looked in the portraits on easels beside his coffin. Hood had seen the similarity when he’d first laid eyes on Ruiz, terrified and dying in Madeline’s courtyard, but his mind had been too frantic to make the connection.