L. A. Outlaws

by T. Jefferson Parker

  As evidence I now present comparable creases, he thought. He burped and shook his head. What were the hundreds of people who knew Suzanne Jones thinking when they saw Allison Murrieta on TV? Good question. Apparently not what he was thinking.

  He got out the copy of Suzanne Jones’s phone bill and flattened it against his knee so he could read it.

  He chose a Los Angeles number and a woman answered. Hood identified himself as a Los Angeles County deputy and said that he was trying to locate Suzanne Jones. She had suddenly gone out of contact and he was concerned. Hood offered his badge number and a number to call at LASD if she wanted to verify that he was a deputy on official business.

  “Did you talk to Ernest?” she asked.

  “He’s out of contact, too.”

  “And she’s not at home?”

  “The family moved out suddenly on Sunday night,” said Hood. “There was an incident in the neighborhood.”

  “Incident?”

  “She was fine. Her children and Ernest were fine. Then—she stopped returning our calls.”

  Then, thought Hood—I almost got her murdered at a motel up in Torrance and I can’t figure out why she hit the wind.

  “I’m sorry,” said the woman. “I just don’t know where she would go. We work together at L.A. Unified. But she lives way down in San Diego and I rarely talk to her during the summer. I wish I could help.”

  Hood got an idea but he was afraid it was a bad one. At least that’s how it struck him at first but he decided to air it anyway. Maybe it was the beer, but Hood figured if Lenny Overbrook could tell a difficult truth then he, Hood, could ask a difficult question. Something in this woman’s voice made him believe he should try.

  “Are you close to a TV set?” he asked.

  “Why?”

  “I’m asking for your help. Turn on Channel Four.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause. Hood could hear the phone hit something solid like a table or counter. A moment later she was back.

  “Allison Murrieta,” she said. “She robbed a place over in Long Beach last night. I kind of like her but I’m afraid she’ll kill somebody someday. What’s this got to do with Suzanne?”

  “Do they look alike?” asked Hood.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Well, no. They don’t look much alike. Suzanne is tall and athletically proportioned. This robber is thicker. Look at her. She’s not tall, and she’s full. Allison has black hair but Suzanne’s is light brown. Of course the mask hides the important features, so there’s no resemblance to be seen.”

  On-screen Allison was finishing up her KFC heist of Tuesday night, hamming it up with a burly workman who was down on his knees in front of her.

  To Hood the guy looked big, even on his knees—thick thighs and heavy arms and a head the size of a Dutch oven—which could make someone standing beside him look shorter. And Allison Murrieta’s loose-fitting black leather vest and roomy, run-for-it trousers—they widened her, suggested a few pounds that might not really be there.

  “What if that’s a wig?” Hood asked.

  “Possible, but I doubt it. You can almost always tell.”

  “What about the face?”

  “Same basic face type, maybe, but it’s not her. Suzanne doesn’t carry herself that way. I know how she walks and moves.”

  She gave Hood her name, Julie Ensley, and Hood gave her his cell number and asked her to call if she learned anything. Hood said that he would have Suzanne call her when he found her.

  “You’re right,” he lied. “Suzanne and Allison don’t look that much alike to me. It was a false hunch.”

  “Women notice women more than men do sometimes.”

  He got another beer and dialed another Los Angeles number.

  Sid Welch, Suzanne’s principal, had not spoken with her since the last day of school back in June. He had no idea where his teachers went for summer break. Suzanne had a way of showing up at pretty much the last minute. Welch’s words were slightly slurred and his attitude was jocular, but Hood didn’t ask him to turn on a TV.

  He dialed a Temecula number and got the recording for Oscar’s Septic Service. And another recording for Quality Motors in Alpine.

  Then he tried an Anza Valley number.

  “Growers West,” said the voice.

  And Hood pictured the dour blonde and thought: There it is—a connection between Barry Cohen and Suzanne Jones.

  The message was interrupted by a female voice.

  “Ronette West.”

  Hood reintroduced himself, told Ronette the Suzanne Jones story, offered his shield number.

  “Sorry, Deputy. I don’t know any Suzanne Jones. Where’d you get my number, anyhow?”

  “From Suzanne’s phone bill.”

  “Then you have a problem, dude.”

  “What do you grow?”

  “The most beautiful flowers on Earth. Nice talking with you. Good-bye.”

  Hood stood up and went outside to his deck. From Barry to Melissa to Octavia to Derek to Fred to Ronette to . . . Suzanne Jones?

  He felt flush with luck. Back inside he cracked another beer and called information and wrote down the address of Growers West down in Anza Valley, Riverside County. Meth country, thought Hood, Tweak City.

  He blew into his hand as if it held dice, then dialed a Bakersfield number and got a woman with a dusky voice but few words.

  She listened to his intro, and he could hear her writing down his badge number and the HQ number that would confirm his identity, rank and assignment.

  She asked him to call back in ten minutes, which Hood did. Her name was Madeline Jones and she was Suzanne’s mother. She agreed to talk to him in her home at eight the next morning. She gave him her address and hoped that he would be on time.

  22

  Hood came up the driveway five minutes early. The desert air was cool and the sky was tinged orange with sunlight and dust. The highways north from L.A. had been a trance of darkness and headlights followed by an ordinary desert sunrise of inordinate beauty. He’d seen an LASD recruiting billboard: “Every Community Needs a Hero. Will It Be You?” In the new light he’d watched the yuccas passing outside the windows of his Camaro, put on some Merle and let the music and the flat, dry land take him back to his days as a boy.

  Madeline’s home was a walled adobe alone on a crest of hill northwest of the city. It looked secure, but in Anbar province Hood had learned that all appearances are just appearances, and he was alive now because of that. So as he came up the drive, he thought again of Lupercio and the address book missing from Suzanne’s computer room and slid his .38 Colt from the glove box into his coat pocket. Hood had cleared this visit with Bakersfield PD through Marlon and Wyte, and Bakersfield had agreed to let the LASD investigation proceed so long as Hood behaved himself. He had a number to call if things got hot.

  He parked at the adobe wall, between two large clay planters with saguaro cactus reaching up. The weathered wooden gate was open and he stood there looking at the courtyard inside. The floor was decomposed granite sand, clean and raked. The roof was a crosshatch of heavy lumber that filtered the early morning sunlight into a slanting forest of beam and shadow. The fountain was large but made only a soft trickling sound. The rock fireplace was blackened from use. A large black kettle sat in the pit, but Hood saw that it contained not food but an explosion of red canna lilies. There were four heavy wooden chairs held together by black iron studs and upholstered in red horsehair, from one of which a large black cat fixed its yellow eyes on Hood.

  “I am Madeline Jones.”

  She had materialized without Hood’s knowing.

  “A pleasure to meet you,” he said.

  She looked midfifties, on the tall side, built with a strength and femininity in which Hood saw her daughter. Her face was an older version of her daughter’s, too—dark eyes and high cheekbones and a general expression of capa
bility and doubt. Her hair was honey-colored and worn loose almost to her shoulders.

  “Come in.”

  Hood followed her through the courtyard and into the house. It was dim inside, with few windows and the lamps turned low. They passed through a living room and a kitchen. Adjacent to the kitchen was a breakfast alcove with windows looking out on the courtyard. There at a small table sat an older and smaller replica of Madeline—her mother or an aunt, Hood thought. She was reading what looked like a Bible, making notes directly on the pages with a pen. Same distinctive face, same skeptical calm as she looked up from her reading, quietly closed the book and watched him walk by.

  Then they passed an entertainment room with east-facing windows and better light. Hood noted the couches tossed with colorful blankets, a big TV and framed posters from a Mexican soap opera featuring a very beautiful woman who looked like Madeline might have looked thirty years ago, or like Suzanne looked now.

  Madeline sat him at the end of a long dining room table and took the head for herself. On the walls were framed paintings of old California—Spanish missions, vaqueros, bullbaiting, horses. Hood watched the oddly muted play of the paint lit by the electric candles of a chandelier.

  The long table was dark oak and appeared old, and Madeline folded her hands on the wood and looked down it at him.

  “Are you a policeman or her friend?” she asked. Her voice was slow and mannered. Like an actor, thought Hood, or a person used to being listened to.

  “I’m both. What does she say?”

  “She trusts but doubts you.”

  “I grew up here, too. Bakersfield High, class of ’ninety-eight.”

  “Tennis.”

  “Well, I made the team.”

  “Then law enforcement.”

  “College at Northridge—political science—then Sheriff ’s Academy, then the navy, now L.A. Did you grow up here, Ms. Jones?”

  “Mexico City. A Spanish family—my mother was an actor and my father was her writer. My father died years ago, and as you saw, my mother lives here with me. I fell in love and moved to Hollywood when I was very young. I married an unlucky writer, Jones.”

  “I met Ernest.”

  “Like Suzanne I’ve left a collection of interesting men behind me. We’re drawn to good lovers and good fathers. A very rare combination. It makes for a life of ecstatic disappointment.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Why should I tell you? The last time she accepted your protection she was nearly murdered by a man with a machete.”

  “Because without my protection he’ll find her again.”

  “Who is this man? Why does he want Suzanne?”

  Hood told her about Miracle Auto Body, Barry Cohen and the missing diamonds, Lupercio Maygar.

  Madeline nodded. “I find it hard to believe that such a small coincidence—seeing a man from your car, in the course of your travels to visit a sister-in-law—can lead to a sentence of death.”

  “In some worlds it’s common,” said Hood. “Suzanne entered that world without knowing it.”

  “What has this civilization come to? Why can’t you guardians guard the innocent?”

  “We try, but we need help. That’s why you should tell me how to contact her. She has a new cell number by now. That would be a good place to start.”

  She looked down the table at him. “As a girl she was rebellious, like her mother and her mother’s mother. I tried to instill two things in her: courage and independence. As a young mother I wanted Suzanne to make history. As an adult, she wanted to teach it. Neither one of us ever saw the value of compromising our desires, if there is any value in compromise at all. So, I became her captain and she became my mutineer. This is the story of every mother and daughter.”

  “She’s a bright and beautiful woman.”

  “Do you believe that beauty is a curse?”

  “It can open doors that should be left shut.”

  “Are you one of them?”

  Hood shifted his weight in the heavy old chair. Down at the other end of the table Madeline stared at him, her eyes reflecting the light of the chandelier.

  “I don’t know if I’m better left shut. I’m pretty much what I seem.”

  “She says you have secrets.”

  “I think she does, too. I’m not sure that Suzanne is what she seems.”

  Hood sensed the stillness at the other end of the table.

  “Explain,” she said.

  “I can’t explain one thing about your daughter. I don’t even have a number to call.”

  “You need to know who you’re looking for.”

  “I need to find her.”

  “I can show you what she was,” said Madeline. “Here, come with me, Mr. Hood.”

  He stood and took a better look at the painting on the wall as he pushed in his chair. He saw that it was not a painting at all but a print.

  He followed her to the entertainment room, now awash in full morning sun. She pointed him to a leather couch and handed him two big, heavy scrapbooks from one of the bookshelves, then sat down not far from him. Hood looked through the pages of the first volume—a birth certificate, baby and toddler pictures, birthday and holiday pictures, soccer and swimming certificates, a record of baptism, report cards and class pictures from kindergarten, first and second grades. From what Hood could see Suzanne had been a skinny, big-toothed tomboy: Suzanne holding a snake, Suzanne with a fishing pole, Suzanne in a white martial arts uniform breaking a board with her hand and a grimace and a Bakersfield Hapkido Federation emblem on the wall behind her.

  The next page contained a report titled: A Day in the Life of the Outlaw Joaquin Murrieta. By Suzanne Jones. The cover was orange construction paper, and the title was printed in a large old-fashioned typeface, like a wanted poster from the Old West. Below the title was the same image that Dave Boyer had used in his TV special the night before—Joaquin Murrieta with his long hair and his wild eyes.

  Hood looked up at Madeline. She had leaned closer, and her closeness startled him. He thought that her eyes looked like Joaquin’s with less wildness, and that Suzanne’s eyes did, too.

  “Fourth grade,” she said. “California history.”

  Hood lifted the plastic protector and turned the orange cover.

  Joaquin woke up with the sun that day as he always did. He could hear his beloved mount, Jorge, neighing in the barn. His young wife, Rosa, slept with her head on a pillow and her mind in dreams. It was a glorious morning outside the small town of Coloma, California.

  “She liked this outlaw,” Hood said.

  “She talked about him a lot back then. But you will learn someday that children talk about a lot of things. Her best friend wrote about Father Serra and mission life. This bored Suzanne. Suzanne always chose the underdog, the outlaw, the doomed. Later, she became interested in Frank James—Jesse’s brother—who lived out his life in Los Angeles and died in 1915. She visited his home there. Then there was Tiburcio Vasquez, the outlaw who hid in the rocks north of L.A. Of course we visited the rocks, spent a night there to communicate with his ghost. When they tried O.J., she was eighteen. I couldn’t get her to turn off the TV. Hours, days, weeks watching that trial. I don’t know how she kept her grades up.”

  “What did she think of O.J.?” Hood asked.

  “He fascinated her. She thought he did it.”

  Hood turned pages.

  Then Joaquin watched as they hanged his brother. His black eyes burned with an anger that would never leave them until the day he died. In spite of Joaquin’s great strength he was helpless against the Anglo ropes that held him.

  “She tried to put herself into his mind,” said Hood.

  “Like a writer or an actor.”

  Hood closed the report, lowered the protective plastic cover and turned the next pages of the scrapbook.

  He saw Suzanne’s rush of adolescent growth in junior high school. When she graduated from eighth grade, she looked more like a high school junior.

&nbs
p; Hood set aside the book and looked through the next one. Suzanne was still swimming and playing soccer her first year of high school at East Bakersfield. She still worked out at hapkido, but the yellow belt of her youth had turned black. She wrote sports reports and movie reviews for the school paper. She attended several dances, never with the same date. She looked lovely and bored. She went to the junior prom with a boy who looked very much like her son Bradley. Most of her sophomore year was missing. Because of the birth of Bradley, thought Hood. But there were no pictures of the young mother and her son. There were snapshots of her at work: Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Subway.

  Allison Murrieta’s favorite haunts, thought Hood.

  Her junior and senior years of high school were scarcely represented at all—school photographs, a graduation announcement and her diploma from Vista West Continuation. Busy with the baby and work, thought Hood. Amazing she’d gotten her diploma.

  But suddenly there were junior college and state university report cards, newspaper clippings of her triumphs at hapkido tournaments in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Dallas. She was knocked unconscious in the Dallas finals. There were several pictures of Suzanne with various boyfriends. Several with small Bradley, already about two years old by the look of him. He simply appeared in her life, unexplained, but increasingly present. He was cute. There were local newspaper clippings about Suzanne graduating summa cum laude from Dominguez Hills, a columnist’s note about her being hired by the Los Angeles Unified School District, articles about awards and commendations she’d earned in her early teaching career. The last page had just one small item on it, a Chinese cookie fortune taped diagonally beneath the plastic cover sheet: “History is not made by the timid.”

  Hood set the book on top of the other. “Thank you.”

  “The past is now. A sigh. A generation. A grave and a birthplace. It’s all one instant. Look at me and you see my mother. Look at her and you see Suzanne.”