L. A. Outlaws

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “We will not eat here, Frank,” she says.

  The old man regards me with beautiful gray eyes and he smiles, then pivots and places his cane for the turn.

  He’s still nodding as he drops to the floor.

  The old woman just stares at him.

  The pretty cashier gives me the heavy double bags with one hand and the other goes to her mouth. The kid with the French fry basket says, “Whoa,” and the manager suddenly jumps up and looks over the counter. Two customers rush in from the dining room. The front door opens and three teenaged boys shuffle in then stop, bumping into each other.

  I aim Cañonita at the teenagers while I walk across the room and stand over Mr. Geezer. I kneel down and find his carotid pulse with my left hand, my right still holding Cañonita firm on the boys. There isn’t much pulse and his mouth is hanging open some so I figure he’s not breathing right.

  “Get down here and CPR this guy,” I say to the wife.

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Boys, you know how to do CPR, right?”

  They mumble and shy away.

  “Fuck, what’s wrong with you people? Pretty face, you know CPR?”

  “I forgot, I used to know, but . . .”

  “Shut up! Red! Get over here, sister. Your lucky day. And make it quick.”

  The manager bursts into the lobby through a windowed kitchen door.

  “Do you know CPR?”

  “I do not.”

  “Watch me. I’m going to show you once. I’m going to explain what I’m doing. Then you’re going to take over. If you make a move on me while I’m breathing for this guy—like if you try to get this mask off or the gun? I’ll come off him and shoot you. Got it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Watch and learn, Red.”

  I put Cañonita in my left hand, hook my right thumb deep over the old man’s tongue and lift his head back to open the trachea. I explain this to Red, who is nodding quickly. Then I get Cañonita in a funny grip so I can use my left hand to pinch Mr. Geezer’s nose shut. With my mouth I cover my thumb and his mouth and give him a nice, slow, even exhale. I taste my breath going into a small cavern that smells mildly of meat. I feel my breath come to the end of the cavern, like blowing up a balloon. I look up sideways to see Red nodding even faster. I count to four and breathe for him again. Red practically elbows me away so she can get in and try it. So I swing around and straddle the guy and join my hands over his firm but oddly thin and light chest. It feels like he’s made of aluminum, like an office blind or a soda can. Down-up. Down-up. Down-up.

  “Count seconds, Red. Every other second you press in. One, two, three, four—all the way to twenty. Got it? It’ll keep his heart going or maybe even start it back up.”

  “Push on every other count.”

  “Then ventilate him, like I just did. Some of the new protocols say to skip this part, but I wouldn’t. Look at this guy. It’s four breaths, twenty pushes. Four breaths, twenty pushes. The damned experts change the ratio every year or so just to confuse people like us. But this can work. Good luck.”

  “Yes,” she says, then grabs Mr. Geezer’s nose and swoops down to get him in a mouth lock.

  I jump up, swing Cañonita in a semicircle and make sure the parking lot isn’t crawling with innocent bystand ers or cops.

  And if it were, what choice would I have but to run out through them? I feel as if I’ve been breathing for that old guy for hours, like the whole world has had time to get here and get their cameras ready and their guns drawn and wait for me to walk into the shitstorm. I feel like I’m never going to make it to those swinging doors. I step in that direction. The teenagers part.

  I’m too rattled to even hand out my business cards.

  But miracle is in the air tonight. The GTO beckons from the other side of the hedge like a burning bush.

  Four hundred horses.

  And the lot is empty of pedestrians, just a minivan looking for a place to park.

  I’m almost to the door when Mr. Geezer coughs and sputters. Red looks at me with pugnacious wonder. Mrs. Geezer throws tears as she silently kneels over her husband with her hands folded under her chin like for a prayer.

  Too bad nobody has a camera to show me saving the old man’s life on TV—fame to go with my infamy.

  I walk out, palm the gun and shorten my stride. I take a deep breath. Mask off. Head high, back straight, eyes alert.

  I know I look right.

  I’m a just a hungry consumer with a hard-earned bag of burgers and fries. Maybe even a family to feed. Nobody can stop me.

  I can’t even stop myself.

  I have just enough time to secure my tools in the adjoining room, shower and change before Hood arrives. Short dress. Of course I brush my teeth.

  When he comes through the door I swarm him.

  A thick bunch of roses and a bagged bottle of something drop to the floor and I pull him through them toward the bed. I hear the crunch of the stems on carpet and the rattle of the paper bag. Hey, I can drink wine or smell a flower anytime but right now I got Charlie Hood where I want him and no conventional weapon can keep me off him.

  It doesn’t last long but after it I’m starved so I take him to dinner in the GTO.

  “Nice car.”

  “I have nice friends,” I say. “I choose them on the basis of the cars they can lend me.”

  “This have the three-fifty horse?”

  “It’s the six-liter, Charles—a full four hundred. Sick torque, and I love that it looks like something my grandmother would drive. No wonder they quit making it.”

  “Where’s the Corvette?”

  “In for service.”

  He’s looking at me with an expression I’ve never seen on him before. Like he’s discovered something and locked it up for safekeeping. Up until now I made Hood nervous or least uncertain but now I wonder if my mother might have got him thinking about my unorthodox girlhood and or that I shot Bradley’s father or that I’ve had more boyfriends than Hood has had dates.

  Or maybe he changed his mind about me and the diamonds.

  Or . . . Allison?

  I pick a Persian restaurant on Sunset with private rooms where we can sit on beautiful pillows and eat spicy food and I can touch him. Hood seems gently befuddled by his surroundings and I wonder if it has to do with his time in Iraq. Or, again, if it has to do with me.

  “You’re quiet,” I say. “Remind you of the war?”

  “Just the way the people look.”

  “I want you to tell me about it someday.”

  “I will.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Not tonight,” says Hood. “Have a glass of wine.”

  “I told you I don’t drink, Deputy.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “Like having a cigarette before they shoot you?”

  He looks at me then with genuine amusement. I like a guy who can enjoy your joke without having to make a better one. I like a guy whose ears turn red once in a while. Most of all I like a guy who’s got the kind of Man Thing that you can’t fight or ruin or dissolve or avoid—this big blocky clunky Man Thing right in the middle of him. The Man Thing is a nuisance, I’ll admit, and early on I learned every trick in the book for eliminating it. Mom taught me some of them. Grandma some. Girls just learn most of them on their own. The deal is, some men will let you take the Man Thing and dispose of it. They actually think that’s what women want. I’ve got no time for men like that anymore. Because the Man Thing is half of what makes the time shared by a man and a woman interesting. It’s like this dirt track we had out in the Bakersfield desert when I was a kid. It was a little oval and we’d race our bikes around it as fast as we could. It was flat and smooth and level and you could haul ass. But there was one hairy thing about it—a big sharp rock lodged right in the middle of the far turn. It stuck up, pointing back, like a big dull fishhook looking to stab you. We had some bad wipeouts trying to miss that rock. We didn’t always miss. There were stit
ches and broken bones. Terry Lilley knocked out his front teeth on it. I picked them out of the dirt but they couldn’t fasten them back on. So one day we got together like intelligent human beings and dug the thing out and rolled it off the course. We filled the hole and packed the dirt down hard and rode around that track for a few hours. We made some good time. Very fast. Very smooth. And very boring. So we dug the hole and rolled the rock back into place and buried it just like it was. That’s what the Man Thing does—it makes the race dangerous and difficult and worth running.

  And Hood’s got it loud and clear, even in his smile.

  “You don’t have to get shot to enjoy a cigarette once in a while,” he says. “The wine makes you peaceful and the smoke makes you calm.”

  “But I don’t want peace or calm.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I can explain by conducting a Socratic dialogue, as I sometimes do with my brighter students.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Rather drive a Rolls Silver Shadow or turbocharged Porsche nine-eleven Carrera?”

  “Carrera, for sure.”

  “El Do or GTO?”

  “I’d go Goat.”

  “Escalade or Mustang GT?”

  “Well, the ’Stang, no contest.”

  “Me too. See, Hood, it’s just human nature to want to go fast. And feel it. Feel it. That’s what I want.”

  I get up real close to his ear with my mouth, just like that first Sunday he came to my house. I like it here. Now I just have to whisper: “I mean, Charlie, what if a doctor could give you a pill that would give you ten back-to-back o’s but you couldn’t feel each one of them separate and distinct?”

  Hood actually thinks about this one. Just the trace of a frown passes over his brow. Even if he’s just acting dumb I still love it.

  “What’s an orgasm if you don’t feel it?” he finally says.

  “That’s what I’m trying to explain, you Bakersfield hick.”

  “You value your hot spots, Suzanne.”

  “I know I do. And I know this, too, Hood—I won’t be young very long. I’ll use ’em while they’re usable.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Geezer come to mind right then. I see Hood and me fifty years from now as Mr. and Mrs. Geezer and I know that’s supposed to warm my heart but it just plain doesn’t.

  “You’re pretty much everything my mom told me to stay away from,” says Hood.

  “That’s nice to hear. The old bag ever let you have any fun?”

  Hood smiles again, nodding, eyes bright and not quite reckless. I kiss him with feeling and when the waiter comes through the ornate curtain into our little nest I tell him to beat it. He smiles and bows and pulls the curtain tight.

  Then it’s just a small underwear adjustment and a pull of zipper and I’m riding Hood right there in the pillows. He looks straight into my face. Soon comes a point when my heart is pounding so loud I can’t hear much else and Hood’s usually sharp brown eyes glaze over, and I’m welded to this guy.

  When he finally manages to stand and put himself back together, he turns away so I won’t see. Imagine. His hair sticks up on one side. He excuses himself to the men’s room. His wallet has fallen out and is half-hidden under a lush satin pillow so I look it over, finger the bills—eighty-two bucks. I take out two of the twenties, rub them together, then stuff them back. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I set the wallet at his place on the low table.

  A few minutes later Charlie is back with his hair wetted down like Jordan does his before school. Charlie looks proud of himself, like he just got away with something, which he did.

  “My wallet,” he says.

  “Better count the cash.”

  He sits down and a while later we have a dessert made of dates and cream. Most excellent.

  Hood has another glass of wine and we don’t say much.

  I look at him and he sees I’d like to do it again but he shakes his head no with a toothy smile and raises his fingers in a cross like I’m a vampire or something.

  I drive him up Sunset fast in the GTO and blast up into the Hollywood Hills to this turnout I know.

  We park and sit in the car just like real lovers, looking down on the city lights with the windows down and the breeze bringing us the smells of the arid hills but not so strong that they interfere with the new car smell, the finest fragrance on earth in my opinion.

  I hold Hood’s hand and rest my head on his shoulder.

  27

  Hood sat on the safe-house couch and loaded a new disc into the recorder. He made sure the time and date were right. Wyte’s aluminum-cased laptop sat on the coffee table before him. Out on the deck Marlon was setting up the tripod. Suzanne stood with her back to Marlon, taking in the afternoon view of Marina del Rey through the shaggy-headed palms.

  Hood could hear their voices through the screen door:

  So this is what a safe house looks like.

  Safe apartment is all.

  What makes a safe house safe?

  Only the good guys get in.

  Bora Bora Way. Fifth floor. Sunset views. Nice.

  We try. You bring the sunglasses?

  All I own. Three pair.

  Turn around.

  Hood watched Suzanne stand at attention before Marlon as he adjusted the glasses like she was a star and he was a director who wanted everything just right. They stood face-to-face, and the breeze blew brown strands of her hair into his face, and they both smiled. Then Marlon positioned her facing the Pacific again and stood back beside the tripod and studied her for a moment.

  Try another pair.

  I’ve got my Jackie O’s.

  Hood watched her trade out the first pair of sunglasses for her Jackie O’s. They were big and curvaceous and dark and Hood figured they’d be perfect for Lupercio.

  I don’t get why all the sunglasses. Something tells me it’s not about the way I look.

  It’s about the message you send.

  She cocked her head and looked at Marlon. Then she turned just enough to see the palms and the beach and the whitecapped ocean beyond them. She turned farther and looked through the sliding glass door to Hood.

  The reflection. He’ll see all this in my glasses.

  But we want you to look good, too. The Jackie O’s are perfect.

  Hood took the camera out onto the deck.

  Ten takes later they had it right. Suzanne reassured her friends and family and colleagues that she was fine, she was safe, and this would all be over soon. She told everybody not to worry.

  Hood and Marlon listened from the curtained kitchen so as not to be caught on the video. Later, watching the various takes on disc, Hood could see the apartment complex and the palms and the beach and the ocean reflected in the dark lenses.

  “It’s Marina del Rey, all right,” said Suzanne. “It’s these apartments. It can’t be anyplace else.”

  “Not if you know L.A. like Lupercio does,” said Marlon.

  “And Valley Center, Torrance and Bakersfield,” said Suzanne.

  She looked at Hood, then at Wyte’s computer, then back at Hood with an odd expression. Hood wondered if the laptop looked as orphaned to her as it now did to him. If so, it might be dawning on her where its owner was, which was downstairs working on her car.

  “We appreciate this,” said Marlon. He ran his comb through his shiny black hair. It was a rockabilly do and Hood knew that Marlon was proud of it and wanted Suzanne to notice.

  “I appreciate it, too. Thank you. Well, gotta go.”

  They shook hands, and Hood walked Suzanne to the elevator then out to her Sentra.

  “Where’s the Goat?”

  “Resting.”

  “Give it back to your friend?”

  “Don’t try to figure where I’ve been, Charlie.”

  Which is exactly what Hood was doing, going back to the night before. He figured she’d boosted the Goat for the BK job but as yet it hadn’t made the hot list. Sometimes, if the car’s owner was out of town, a stolen c
ar went unreported for days or weeks. Long-term airport parking lots were popular places to make a grab that wouldn’t immediately hit the hot list. But he’d looked hard at the ignition when Suzanne wasn’t aware and it looked new to Hood, factory. And if she pulled the door lock with a slide-hammer, then she’d either gotten lucky and been able to work the assembly back in or she’d replaced it.

  “Guess I don’t have to tell you to keep moving,” said Hood.

  “No. Vaya con Dios, Hood.”

  “You, too.”

  “Always.”

  Back upstairs Wyte was on the couch tapping the keypad of his laptop. A man that Hood had never met sat at the dinette table, two more laptop computers open before him and a box of discs off to one side. He was slender, silver-haired and tanned. Hood recognized him from headquarters—a surveillance specialist. Marlon sat across from the specialist, watching playbacks of Suzanne on the camera viewfinder.

  Wyte introduced Hood to Bruce Lister from tech services. “Bruce and I got the tracker on the Sentra while Jones did her video.”

  “Take eight’s the best,” said Marlon.

  “Check this out, gentlemen,” said Wyte.

  He set his laptop on the coffee table. Hood and Marlon sat on either side of him and leaned toward the screen, which displayed a map section of Marina del Rey. A blinking red indicator light moved northbound on Via Marina. The light advanced and the map quadrant slowly scrolled down in accordance with the speed of Suzanne Jones’s Sentra.

  “Solid,” said Marlon.

  Lister nodded but didn’t look up from the discs and laptops before him.

  They watched the Sentra head toward the 405 Freeway. Hood found something mesmerizing in this, something covert and omnipotent.

  Lister brought over the two laptops and set them up on the coffee table, one for Hood and one for Marlon. The same map of Marina del Rey scrolled slowly south as the Sentra moved north on the freeway.

  “Just follow the IBEX icon on the desktop, it’ll take you to the real-time feed. Wherever the car is, you’ll know. The GPU can get you an exact location and you can turn the location into a nearest address with the FIND tab under options. You won’t even lose the map if you minimize. It’s simple enough for a five-year-old.”