T Parker - L. A. Outlaws

I manage a tired smile as I hold up Kenny for a moment, then step away from the podium.

Ruth hops back onto the milk crate for questions.

After lunch we go to Ruth’s office in Century City. We’re twelve stories up, receiving steaming triple espres sos produced by an elaborate copper machine in Ruth’s suite and served by one of her secretaries. The suite is cream-colored everything, except her desk, which looks like Honduran mahogany, and the art on the wall, which are silk screens from Warhol’s animal series and some very nice Hockney lithographs. There’s a glass table with magazines on it and on top is this week’s People with Allison’s masked face on the cover.

When the secretary leaves, Ruth sighs deeply, punches a remote control to open a window and takes a pack of cigarettes from her desk. She offers me one but I decline.

She sits behind the desk, looking hard at me. She’s still looking hard at me as she lights her smoke with one of those long windproof fireplace lighters that is basically a flamethrower. She sets the lighter on the desk, slides a yellow notepad over and takes a pencil from a thick glass holder. Beside the pencils is a small box that looks like a speaker, and she turns it on. The smoke drifts into the box.

“Talk to me, Suzanne.”

“Where do I start?”

“With why you drove a stolen car to a Merle Haggard show.”

“Fastest way to get there?”

“Suzanne.”

“Ruth-relax. This is all simpler than it looks.”

I sit back in my chair and watch her smoke rise and dip. I look her straight in the eyes.

“About two weeks ago I got a call from a woman claiming to be Allison Murrieta. I have no idea how she got my number. It was the day after the Sheriffs plastered my face all over the TV, telling everyone that Lupercio Maygar was after me. She had seen all that and she said she wasn’t going to, and I quote, let that vicious thug kill you . I told her I could handle my own problems and she laughed. She asked me if I needed anything-a car, some cash for living on the run, maybe a good gun. I said I didn’t need anything, though I did make a crack about a Cadillac STS being the car I’d most like. I’m a car girl.”

Ruth exhales hugely, more smoke than you’d think a small woman could get inside her. The smoke lingers upward then changes its mind and hurries down into the box. She steadies the yellow pad with her cigarette hand, writes something with the other, fixes me again with her clear brown eyes.

“Of course I figured it was a hoax,” I said. “A few days later she called again. Same voice. It was evening. The night before, the real Allison Murrieta had robbed a Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the night before that, a Burger King. She talked about them, about this old guy who had some kind of seizure at the BK, and her gun going off accidentally. She had details you wouldn’t have gotten off the news clips of those robberies. You know, stuff you’d have to be there to know-what the old man’s wife did, and what the surfers smelled like, how when she’s wearing that mask it cuts down her peripheral vision which really bugs her but she has to have it and the crystal-she said it’s a Swarovski-adds a little bit of class. She made the mask herself, she said.”

Ruth doesn’t write much. I blather and she studies me and scribbles something, then she studies me some more.

“Why did she call?”

The espresso is extremely good. It makes me want to stand up and run around, maybe pull a gun and rob someone, just for the pure joyful rush of it. But I sit still and answer.

“Same reason, I guess-she wanted to know if there was anything I needed. I said no. She said if she knew where I was she might be able to provide some ‘meaningful security’ for me. I refused to tell her where I was. I think she wanted to tell someone about the crimes she committed. So, she talked.”

Ruth scribbles, underlines something. “Then?”

“She called me again a day or so later. Said she wanted to know how I was doing. I was wishing she wouldn’t call anymore but I was also kind of getting to like her. She said she had a feel for Lupercio, thought she’d catch up with him soon. I said, ‘What-you’re not looking for him are you?’ And she laughed and said, ‘You’re damned right I am.’ She said I’d enjoy my freedom even more when I got it back again. Said she had a kick-ass eighth-grade history teacher and loved him. Then she hung up.”

“Did she scramble her voice?” said Ruth.

“No. It was natural. A woman’s voice, no accent that I could tell. A mature voice, but not an old one. Smooth, calm.”

“Good. Go on.”

“The day after Lupercio got smashed up in his car, I left the hotel late afternoon-”

“What hotel?”

“The Sunset Tower-to buy a few things then go see Ernest and the boys. They were down in Huntington Beach. I bought a blouse and jeans at a boutique on Sunset. When I came out, Allison Murrieta was leaning up against my Sentra.”

Ruth looks up from her pad. She opens a drawer and slaps a green glass ashtray to the desktop. “Describe her.”

“I had no idea who she was. Five feet five or six, one-thirty. Curvy but stout. She wears a wig for the robberies. Her real hair is short, straight and has a red henna job. Her eyes are brown. Good skin. On TV, the mask makes her face look wide, but her face really is wide. She has high cheekbones and pretty lips and chin. She’s attractive. Sexy attractive, not girl-next-door attractive. She was wearing a workout suit and athletic shoes. She had a leather satchel over her shoulder. I can tell you I could see her every day, talk to her all the time, and not see Allison Murrieta in her-they look so little alike.”

Ruth stares at me. The pencil is poised but unmoving.

“She said, ‘I’m Allison. Get in. Let’s talk.’ She flashed that little white gun. I’d never had a gun brandished at me and it’s a very chilling thing. I wondered if she was going to do something violent and flamboyant to me, but I kept thinking that I was better PR for her alive than shot up. Anyway, I had my key out so I opened the driver’s door and hit the unlock. We sat in the car for a few minutes. She was wearing the new Tommy Hilfiger scent. She told me that she’d seen Lupercio the night before, crushed to death in a car. She didn’t say she’d done it, but it was implied. She seemed unfazed. She said I could go back to my family, go back to work. She took a plastic Blockbuster bag out of the satchel and handed it to me. I looked in-it was heavy with bills and some change. I gave it back. I told her I didn’t need it, didn’t want it.”

“How much was there?”

“Maybe a thousand. I really just glanced at it. She put it back in the satchel and said, ‘Suzanne, you can say no to money but I know you can’t say no to that. ’ She nodded at this Caddy STS parked right next to me. It was black and beautiful. I remembered that joke I made to her the first time we talked and I thought me and my big mouth. ‘Drive it tonight,’ she said. ‘Go out and celebrate. You deserve to. It’s not stolen, it’s borrowed. Leave it with the Tower valet when you’re done with it and I’ll take care of the rest. I’ll make sure this pathetic heap gets back to your hotel.’ She called my Sentra a pathetic heap.”

“And what did you do?”

“Ruth, I thought about it. I loved the STS, I’ll confess to that. But I also saw that Allison really wanted me to take it. I wondered if it was just to make her more colorful, make her seem more like Robin Hood. If it was something she’d tell the press about, and exploit. I also believed that it was a borrowed car, because I figured if she’d stolen it, she’d be proud, right? But mainly, I felt that if I turned the car down she’d feel disrespected and then get angry. I thought of the gun. There was an underlying threat from the gun-at least in my mind. So I agreed to take the car.”