L. A. Outlaws (20 page)

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.

“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.

“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.

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.”

Hood thought there was truth in that. “When I look at my father, he’s losing his mind.”

“And you see yourself someday,” said Madeline.

“Yes.”

“The old become infants.”

“I like your daughter very much.”

“You’ve captivated her.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

“To see if you’re the one,” said Madeline.

“The one who what?”

“Who sees my daughter as she really is.”

“Am I?”

“I have no evidence of that.”

Hood said nothing for a moment, just looked out at the flat land and the power lines drooping north. A high school buddy had crashed his new motorcycle into a power pole at over a hundred miles an hour. He was a heck of a bull rider and a wrestler, too.

“I have something to show you,” said Hood.

He pulled the DVD from the pocket of his sport coat and held it up to her.

“Unfortunately, this television needs repair,” she said. “I have a small one in my bedroom. I’ll bring it out.”

Madeline left the room. Hood stood and went to the window and looked out at the desert. There was a breeze now, and he could feel a hint of its heat coming through the glass. He looked at the book titles. At eye level there were hardcover histories and commentaries on world cinema and television, entertainment biographies and non-fiction, most in excellent condition, all neatly arranged and alphabetized by title. The bottom shelves were stuffed with paperback bodice rippers, westerns and thrillers bloated by use and haphazardly arranged.

He studied a poster for the Mexican soap opera star-ring Madeline Mercedes. The show was called
Nosotros,
and the poster was dated 1971. There were similar posters for ’72, ’73 and ’74. Hood touched the dusty poster glass.

He wandered into the breakfast alcove, but the grandmother was gone. Her book and pen were still at her place, and when Hood stood near her chair and looked down, he saw the book was a Bible with a crossword puzzle pamphlet inserted between its pages.

Back in the entertainment room Madeline set down a small TV with a DVD player built in.

Hood plugged it in, slipped his copy of Dave Boyer’s special into the play slot and sat at the opposite end of the couch from Madeline.

They watched the first ten minutes in silence. Allison robbed and hammed it up and talked about Joaquin from behind her gem-studded mask.

“Did you see this last night?” asked Hood.

“Yes.”

“Is that Suzanne?”

“Of course it is.”

He crossed the room and hit the PAUSE button. His heart was going fast. “Are you going to help me find her or not?”

“That depends on you.”

“Maybe you should tell me what’s on your mind, Ms. Jones, because I sure can’t read it.”

“Sit. Please.”

Hood hit the PLAY and MUTE buttons on the little TV set then sat down again.

“How long did it take you to recognize her?” asked Madeline.

“A few seconds. But I wasn’t sure.”

“It took me longer than a few seconds. She carries herself differently when she plays this role. The second time I saw video of Allison Murrieta, I knew. My daughter. There she was, with a mask and a wig and a gun.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“I have a cell number for you. It’s all I know.”

Hood handed her a pen and his notebook, and she wrote down a number from memory then set the notebook and the pen on the couch between them.

“What’s the deal with Joaquin Murrieta?” he asked.

“There is no consensus that such a man ever existed, outside of the stories about him. Some historians say he was only legend, a product of Anglo fear. Some say he was a real man. Of those, some claim he was born in Chile, others in Mexico. For every story about him, such as the ones that Suzanne tells on TV, there is a contradictory story about him, too.”

“She doesn’t have his head in a jar?”

“No, she does not.” Madeline looked down.

Hood wondered if the positive identification of a person wearing a mask—even by the suspect’s mother—would be enough to get a warrant for arrest.

“Why is she doing this?” he asked.

“Because it’s profitable and exciting. Because it stimulates and arouses. Because it makes the routine of work and family responsibility tolerable. Because she becomes famous and infamous.”

Hood doubted that Suzanne Jones had sat down in her kitchen one day and asked herself how to make teaching and being a mother more fun, and come up with the idea of armed robbery and grand theft auto.

“Because she wants to please you?” he asked.

“How does this please me?”

“She makes history instead of just teaching it.”

Madeline looked at one of the soap opera posters, then back at Hood. “Perhaps. Perhaps it’s competition, too. I was a bright star in a small universe. Briefly. I gambled with my ambitions and failed. I saw myself in Suzanne until I saw Allison. Then I knew she’d moved beyond me. Far beyond me. She possesses the courage that I never had and always wanted. I’ll confess to you, Mr. Hood—I’m very proud of her and very sad for her.”

“You do understand how this is going to end,” said Hood.