The Renegades (25 page)

“What night of the week?”

“Friday. My payday. But Margo’s always tired from working at Von’s all week and I want to party. So we fight instead. We have bad luck on Fridays. That’s when I stole the cigars.”

Fridays, Hood thought. Build a dream. Take a drive with four suitcases full of something you wear a gun to protect. Fishing gear? Levi’s for the poor?

He asked Farrah how much money Prestige German took in each week, and he said around twenty grand. That came to an annual gross of more than a million dollars. In addition to Heinz, the manager, and five full-time mechanics, there was a part-time bookkeeper, a window washing service and an old janitor that Draper kept on though he didn’t actually do much. Farrah told Hood he made $29.50 an hour now, up from the $25 hourly he made during his first six months. That was five bucks an hour more than Valley Beemer paid him, and the raises here at Prestige, according to Heinz, could come fast and generously.

“As long as you work your ass off and treat the customers like kings,” said Farrah. “I got no trouble doing that. I’m good with cars. I like people okay. It’s Heinz’s job to write the business. He likes to make customers feel cheap if they don’t do what he says is necessary. He says most west side L.A. people don’t want to look cheap. A tune on a Benz S class is eight hundred, and a replacement headlight is six-fifty, so they never look cheap to me. Hell, if you jump-start an S-class convertible you can fry the computer for the convertible top—thirty-six hundred bucks, right there. Happens all the time.”

Hood watched a couple of teenaged boys saunter toward them on the sidewalk—baggy Dickies and Raiders jackets and bright white athletic shoes. They gave Hood the look and he stared back and they looked away.

“Farrah,” he said. “Here’s the deal. If you tell Draper we talked you’ll be in jail yesterday. This is a fact.”

“Don’t.”

“It’s up to you.”

“I don’t owe him. I owe me.”

“Most of the jerks in jail think that way, too. So maybe I should drag you down there now. Then I’d be sure you’re not going to talk to your boss.”

“Not necessary. You made me a deal, man. You gave your word.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Last month. He was coming home after a run. It was early in the morning.”

Hood wrote his number on a sheet of notepad paper and set it on the center console.

“I can help people who help me,” he said.

“Make the cigar problem go away?”

“I doubt it. There’s other things.”

“Name one.”

“Give me a reason to.”

He got out and crossed the street toward Prestige German.

29

Hood made Laguna
by late afternoon. In the public library he copied the restaurant listings from the local phone book, then walked back across Coast Highway to the Hotel Laguna.

He ate outside on the deck. It was slow so he took a table by the railing where he had once sat with Allison Murrieta. He pictured her sitting across from him. He thought that memories are a blessing and a burden. The sun sat on the ocean like a fat red hen, then sank in the night.

In candlelight Hood started at the top of the alphabet and called down the list, asking if Juliet was working. He found no Juliet at all until his twelfth try, at a restaurant called Del Mar. She was seating customers at the moment. Hood thanked the man and rang off.

He sat in the bar of the Del Mar and watched the black Pacific through the window and Juliet as she came and went from the hostess stand in the foyer. She was on the tall side, and lovely. Her smile was measured but her hair was blond and uncomposed. She wore a black backless dress and heels. She had an easy way with the guests, and some of them she greeted by name.

During a slow period she came over and asked the bartender for a soda with lime.

“I like Laguna when it’s slow like this,” Hood said.

“Do you live here?”

“I just visit.”

“I love it here anytime. I think it’s the best city in the whole world to live. I’m a Lagunatic.”

“I live in L.A. It’s got lots to love, too, but lots not to.”

“I like the art museums and Spago.”

“I went to the drag races at Pomona last week. That was great fun.”

She looked at him with mild doubt. She sipped her soda from two thin red straws. “We don’t have drag races here. We have drag queens.”

“That’s funny.”

“I’m Juliet.”

“I’m Rick.”

“What do you do?”

“Security.”

“Like TSA?”

“Commercial-industrial, mostly. Copyright and patent protection, things like that.”

“The Chinese don’t honor them, do they?”

“Not always.”

“I took a class in Szechwan cooking once. Oops, duty calls. Nice talking to you.”

She touched his coat sleeve and got back to her stand before the next party of four came in with a gust of cool March breeze.

Hood stayed a little longer, then left, nodding to her on his way out. He sat in the Camaro across Coast Highway and waited. She came out at ten o’clock, wrapped in a black leather coat, with a red scarf around her neck and a red tote over her shoulder. Instead of the heels she wore white athletic shoes and she headed south on PCH at a good clip. Hood got out of the car and followed behind her down the opposite side. There were enough people walking that he didn’t stand out. Her hair bounced and shone in the streetlight and shop lights. She took long strides and never once looked back. At the Laguna Royale she veered across a walkway and into the lobby. She walked past the wall of mail slots, pushed a white card into another door, then pulled it open with both hands and disappeared.

He waited for a few minutes, then walked across Coast Highway and went into the lobby. He found mail slots for a J. Brown, a J. Astrella and a J. Clayborn.

He hiked back up Coast Highway to his car, keeping his head down and his eyes open for a black 2000 M5. He drove the Camaro back down and found a parking place across from the Royale. It was a good place to keep an eye on the parking entrance. An hour later, just before midnight, he saw a black M5 signal a turn into the Royale. In the streetlight he saw a swatch of white hair and a snapshot of Draper’s face as the car made the turn, then bounced down the ramp toward the garage.

HOOD SAT in his car for an hour, listening to the radio. He was too far out of jurisdiction to get the L.A. Sheriff’s band, so he listened to the news. No sign of Draper or Juliet.

It was also too late to call Jim Warren but he did anyway. Warren sounded slow and lucid as he always did. Hood asked him for a GPS transponder to put on Coleman Draper’s civilian car, and a portable receiver to track it with. Hood knew he would have needed a court order to attach such a device to a suspect’s car. But he also knew that IA had powers beyond the law, even beyond the U.S. Constitution. A cop under suspicion of IA has no Fifth Amendment right—he must answer even the most self-incriminating questions or possibly lose his job, benefits, reputation and future in law enforcement. He must surrender his shield and gun upon the demand of a superior. His work and pay can be suspended during an investigation. He never knows when he’ll be called to testify against himself or another officer and he has no right to an attorney unless he is ordered to stand trial.

Hood feared and disliked IA for all of this, as did most cops, but he was willing to make an exception for Coleman Draper.

So he laid out for Warren the basics of what he knew: that Vasquez and Lopes had pulled over that night but didn’t live to tell about it; that Laws, and likely Draper, had begun to receive large amounts of money shortly after Vasquez and Lopes lost their lives; that every Friday night since then, Laws and Draper had done a job that earned them roughly seven thousand dollars apiece. Next, Hood also laid out what he suspected: that Laws and Draper had framed Shay Eichrodt and beaten him senseless to cover themselves.

“You think they murdered the couriers and took over their route,” said Warren.

“That’s what I think.”

“Where does Londell Dwayne come into play?”

“I don’t know yet.”

There was a long pause.

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Warren.

30

In the morning
Hood stood outside the interview room and watched through a one-way window as Bentley and Orr questioned Londell Dwayne.

Dwayne sat cuffed at a steel table, ankle irons secured to rings in the floor, dressed in the yellow jumpsuit issued to accused violent felons. He was dull-eyed and tired.

Bentley sat across from him in a crisply laundered white dress shirt, no tie. He wore a silver cross on a chain around his thick black neck. There was a folder on the table in front of him, and a digital recorder next to that.

In one corner of the room stood a tripod with a video camera that could be turned off by an interviewer for “off the record” statements. Hood knew that these statements would be videotaped by the two hidden cameras, one positioned in another corner and the other hidden behind a false heat vent behind Dwayne.

Orr paced.

Dwayne sat back and dropped his cuffed hands to his lap.

“I’m not going to record now,” said Bentley. “I’m hoping we can have an honest talk here. Just man-to-man, you and me, nice and easy.”

“Talk away,” said Londell.

“You are in a whole bunch of trouble,” said Bentley.

“I got the alibi.”

“You think you do. Londell, you are under arrest on suspicion of assaulting two peace officers. That would be the Mace. Figure one year in jail. You are under arrest on suspicion of possessing a machine gun. That would be the M249 SAW that I personally saw hidden under your mattress in your apartment. Another year in prison and a ten-thousand-dollar fine. You are under investigation for the statutory rape of a fourteen-year-old girl. One more year in prison. And guess what?”

Dwayne glared at him. “What?”

“That’s the
good
news.”

“That’s mostly all bullshit. I peppered the cops because I was being wrongly pursued. I never even seen a real machine gun in my life. I have never touched a real machine gun. And I definitely never raped Patrice. I made love to her. You know the difference between rape and making love, don’t you?”

“That’s also called illegal intercourse. She has to be eighteen, Londell. Everybody knows that. Tell me you didn’t know that.”

Dwayne shook his head tiredly, but said nothing.

“And that is the least of your problems, because what I want to talk to you about is the murder of Deputy Terry Laws.”

“Talk all you want. I wasn’t there.”

“That’s not what his partner says. He was right there, sitting next to Laws in the squad car. He says you were the shooter.”

“I can’t help what his partner says.”

“But he knows you, Londell—it was your buddy, Hood.”

Londell’s glassy stare followed Orr as he paced. “Hood? If it was Hood, then he knows it
wasn’t
me.”

“You’re the one who’s blind, Londell. You can’t even see the depth of the shit you’re in.”

“
Hood
said it was me?”

Hood saw the disbelief on Londell’s face. Dwayne shook his head and made a face like he’d just swallowed something nauseating.

Bentley sat back and crossed his big arms. “Londell, there are two ways for you to play this. One is you keep lying and covering up and we bury you with the eyewitness, and with additional evidence. We’ll get to that evidence in a minute. The other is you help us and we help you. You tell me what happened, the straight truth of it, and I help you get a fair trial—or maybe no trial at all. I’m sure you had your reasons. They’re probably reasons I can understand. Maybe it came down to your dog—Delilah. I know all about what happened to Delilah. Laws took her and lost her, or sold her, or worse. I got a dog too, man, and I’d kick the ass of any man that would hurt that animal. But Londell, you are looking at the death penalty here. You gunned down a cop right in front of another cop. California Penal Code One-Ninety was
written
for guys like you.”

Londell slumped down in the steel chair. “Why Hood want to mess me up?” he asked quietly. He shook his head, looking in my direction. “I didn’t kill that cop and I ain’t going to no lethal injection. That’s my final answer.”

“That’s exactly where you’ll go if you don’t come clean and tell us what happened.”

Londell sat up straight and leaned toward Bentley. He seemed suddenly light and energized. “I know more than you do. You’re the fool here, not me.”

“Tell me what you know.”

“Here it is: I was with Patrice when the deputy got shot up. We have two motel people can tell you that. We got pictures we took with the date right on them. That’s proof for any jury in the world. You can take me to the court but I’ll win. I’ll win because I can prove I wasn’t even there. It’s so simple even you can understand it, Bentley.”

Bentley stood and sighed. Orr stopped his pacing in front of Londell and looked down at him.

“The motel people aren’t sure,” said Bentley quietly. “I showed them your mugs and they weren’t sure. Witnesses who aren’t sure don’t get far in court.”

“That’s a lie. How can they not be sure?”

“Why would they lie?”

Londell sat back again, hard, and the dull patina returned to his eyes. “We got the pictures we took.”

“Anybody can change a time and date stamp, Londell. You know that.”

“This is ceasing to be funny. We got Will Smith on the TV, right in the background. We were trying to make faces like him. That proves what night it was when the pictures were taken, proves we were there, proves I didn’t mess with the time and date.”

Bentley put both hands on the table and leaned over toward Londell. “I took the camera to the affiliate that shows
Fresh Prince
. The episode on your camera isn’t the episode they aired that night.”

“Bullshit, man! It’s the one where the girl’s father parachutes out of the airplane and leaves Will Smith but Will Smith can’t fly. Then Will Smith finds the other chute and jumps and they land in the same tree!”