The Renegades (30 page)

Draper drove them to a bar out on Garvey in Monterey Park. It wasn’t a deputy’s hangout and it wasn’t quite a dive but Draper noted Bradley’s unimpressed expression as they walked past the drinkers at the bar and got a table in the back.

The waitress was older and she sized up Bradley for an ID check but Draper vouched for the age of both his guests. She took their order, then went to another table. Draper watched Bradley watch her go. Erin glanced at both men and Draper held her eye. He was still looking for the weakness in her.

They sat in silence for a moment. Draper looked at the two youngsters before him—Erin looked a couple of years older but she couldn’t have been much past twenty-one or twenty-two—and even at his own age of twenty-nine he felt drawn to their youth and potential.

“Find us some music, would you?” asked Bradley.

“Sure,” said Erin. “I’ll do that for you.”

“I love you but I don’t deserve you.”

Draper heard no sarcasm in Bradley’s voice, no condescension or hidden meaning. Draper recognized the words as something he would say to Alexia or Juliet. They were the kind of words he had spoken all his life, the most important words on Earth: the ones that people wanted to hear.

“I’ve got something cooking, honey,” said Erin. “I’ll be right there at the bar.”

She kissed Bradley’s cheek and stood and Draper watched her walk to the bar and glide onto a stool and swing her purse onto the bar top. She had left her long black coat over the chair next to Bradley so Draper got a better look at her shape. She was painfully beautiful and the sight of her sitting alone at a bar on a Saturday afternoon amazed him.

“Fantastic,” he said.

“Told you. I really
don’t
deserve her.”

“No. Clearly not.” Draper laughed and drank. Erin went to the jukebox, then back to her stool. She dug a pen from her purse and took a bar napkin from the stack, and Draper watched her scribble something down on it. A moment later the Stones were happily yapping away about making sweet love while the rain came down. Two bikers clomped in and sat at the bar down from Erin. One was tall and one was wide. Bradley stared at them and the wide one stared back.

“She’s writing music right now?” asked Draper.

“She’s always writing music. She writes almost everything the Cheater Slicks play.”

“I’m very impressed.”

“I knew you would be.”

Draper clinked his glass with Bradley’s, then set it down and positioned it perfectly in the center of the cardboard coaster. He watched the bikers move down the bar and sit on either side of Erin, and Bradley watched them, too. Draper spoke loudly now, playing to Erin.

“I guess what I’m saying, Bradley, is that the LASD is a great place to launch from. It would give you an advantage that civilians don’t have. It would be your base and your force. From there you could engage the world. You can become a bureaucrat and rise up through the ranks. You can go into private or corporate security. You can position yourself for election to public office. On an everyday, practical level, you would be armed. The law would be on your side as you go about your day. You could move directly and efficiently toward getting what you want.”

Bradley said nothing. He had locked eyes with the wide biker, who had swiveled away from the bar and leaned his back against it. The tall one had his shaggy head pressed in close to Erin, and Draper could hear the low-pitched gravelly sound of his voice in some kind of narrative—a joke, he thought, or maybe a story about life on a chopper. Draper saw that the two men were rough and experienced, not weekend bikers or mere aficionados of the Harley-Davidson brand.

“If you want riches you take them,” said Draper.

“My mother said it’s not take what you get, but get what you take.”

“She was wise and beautiful.”

“She’s dead.”

“Those two men aren’t going to go away.”

“I can see that.”

“This uniform is provoking them. They know that Erin is with one of us and they’re hoping it’s me.”

“No. The thick one knows she’s with me.”

“I’ll bring her back over and we’ll avoid trouble.”

“No.”

Draper heard the louder, more guttural deliverance of a punch line from the tall man, and saw Erin turn away from him and looked back at Bradley. She looked annoyed. She pulled open her purse and threw in her pen. Wide, still looking at Bradley, hiked up his balls.

“Christ,” said Draper.

Bradley stood and walked over and stopped short. Draper got up and followed. Erin tried to rotate on her stool but Tall was leaning in tight on one side and Wide was leaning back staunch on the other and she didn’t have the strength to move their shoulders.

“Let her out,” said Bradley.

“She likes it here,” said Wide.

“And we like her here,” said Tall. “But she don’t have a sense of humor. Be honest, boy, do you fuck her enough?”

“Plenty, guys, plenty,” she said, and tried to shoulder past Tall but she couldn’t move him. Her purse slid off her lap to the floor.

Bradley took a step forward and knelt and picked it up and stood there with the strap in his hand. Then Wide slid off the stool and stood. He was taller than Draper had thought. He poked Bradley with a finger.

“I like your girlfriend,” said Wide.

“I love her. And I don’t like you.”

Erin had moved into the space vacated by Wide. Draper reached out and took her hand and ushered her back to the table.

“Enough, you idiots,” he said. Then, to the bartender, who had just picked up a cell phone, “Everything’s cool. Buy them a round of doubles.”

Wide poked Bradley in the chest again and Bradley let the purse fall and took the man’s hand in a casual motion and bent the wrist down with his thumbs and turned the hand sharply. Wide screamed and went to one knee and Bradley turned the man’s wrist further and Wide grabbed wildly with his free hand but Bradley stepped away and lifted and turned harder and Draper heard the bone snap and the anguished, breath-sucked scream. Tall stepped forward and threw a punch that caught Bradley on the head but he was already leaning away from it. When Tall followed with a big right roundhouse Bradley stepped inside and blocked it, popped him in the forehead with an elbow, clawed one eye with the fingers of the same hand, then pivoted and drove the butt of his open left palm up into Tall’s nose. There was a bloody explosion and Tall pitched backwards and Bradley threw himself high into the air and caught the man in the rib cage with a bone-crushing kick. Tall collapsed to the floor like a dropped blanket.

It took about ten seconds.

Draper threw Erin’s coat over one arm and pointed her toward the exit.

Then he pulled Bradley back by the collar of his shirt and looked briefly down at Tall, who was curled on his side, panting and bleeding. Wide was still on one knee, white-faced and clammy, his left wrist cradled in his right hand but twisted freakishly askew.

Bradley shook Draper off and took two quick steps to Wide but he didn’t throw or kick. He just stared down at the guy for a long moment, then turned back to Draper.

“If we stay I’ll get mad.”

“We should go.”

Draper pulled him toward Erin and gave her the coat, then went to the bar and offered sincere apologies to the barman and the waitress. He dug five hundreds from his wallet and set them by the drink garnishes and stir sticks. “I’ll be back in an hour to make sure everything is all right.”

“That’s okay, Coleman,” said the bartender.

“Who’s that kid?” asked the waitress.

“Just some brat who wants into the Sheriff’s.”

“You going to take him?”

“What do you think?”

“I’d take him. Be easier than fighting him.”

Draper went over to the bikers. Tall had progressed to his hands and knees. There was a puddle of blood under his bowed head and a long drip leading down to it from his nose. Wide now sat on a bar stool with a nauseated expression on his face and his mangled wrist already beginning to bloat.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Draper said. “If you assholes are still here I’m going to arrest you and take you to jail.”

“I’m going to kill that kid someday,” said Wide.

“Bring help.”

DRAPER DROVE them back to the Cal State parking lot and followed Erin’s directions to their car. It was a classic Cyclone GT that Draper had admired the first time he’d met Bradley, a long few weeks ago. Draper opened the door for Erin and closed it after helping her get the tail of her long black coat properly arranged inside.

“Can I borrow your boyfriend for a minute?” he asked.

“Sure. But don’t let him beat up anybody else.”

“Just a minute for some deputy-to-deputy talk. Ninety seconds, max.”

They walked down the rows of parking spaces, mostly empty now after the Career Crusade.

“Don’t tell Hood about today.”

“I haven’t told him about anything.”

“There’s more to the story of Terry Laws.”

“I know that.”

“Soon. Bradley, if you were the one who canceled Kick, congratulations. It’s what I would have done. I hope the little shit got to enjoy the feeling of the number six before he died. I admired everything about your mother, except that she took up with Hood.”

Bradley studied Draper’s face. “I didn’t care much for that, either.”

“And one more thing. As you’ve seen, to get what you want out of life, you will have to lie to Erin successfully. Other than that, you can build the life she wants. You can take her straight to her dreams. And of course to your own.”

“You’re like the Devil in a uniform,” said Bradley.

“Most people don’t notice devils.”

“Most people are fools.”

“Let’s prove that together someday.”

They were almost to the car. Draper could see Erin looking through a side window at them. He knew that she would be Bradley’s downfall, unless he was an extraordinary boy indeed. It was the way of the world.

Bradley got in and started up the Cyclone and screamed off with a fishtail and a billow of tire smoke. Draper shook his head and smiled as he got into his car. He had been young once, too, just about Bradley’s age when he had given up the dusty roads of Jacumba for the glittering promise of L.A.

In some ways Bradley reminded him of himself. In others he saw that Bradley was far behind him. Bradley had bravado and intelligence. He was hugely selfish, and had an outlaw pedigree. Draper wondered if, because of their similarities, Bradley might someday try to see him for who he really was. Draper had spent his entire life staying close enough to people to influence them but far enough away to remain unknown. Father and mother? Brother and sister? Yes, and okay and fine—he had loved them in the conventional ways. But he could not let them see him truly. Few had seen Coleman Draper and none for very long. But he thought that Bradley Jones could be different.

35

“Hector’s arena on fight night?
Pure insanity. Gangsters everywhere, and not only Mexican. Every Eighteenth click for miles around is there. Cadres of Crips and Bloods and Gangster Disciples. I see stone-faced Eme captains and smiling MS-13 killers and Aryan Brothers and Nazi Lowriders and Asian gangs. And not just gangs—the arena is filled with unaffiliated freelance horribles of every size, shape and color. Talk about a good place for people-watching.

“There are athletes I recognize from the papers—football players, boxers, a recent NBA draftee. Some spectators have brought dates. Every imaginable drug is being used right out in the open, washed down with every imaginable drink, topped off by joints and bongs and pipe loads and tobacco. The smoke hangs in a cloud high up in the ceiling. I figure that if any ten of these people had been gathered in any other place on Earth, there would be multiple homicides and epic mayhem. But fight night is different. It’s a boiling cauldron of L.A. bad guys out for good clean fun. No business is done. All are equal. Affiliations mean nothing. Everyone there is having a great time.

—Look at these fucking people, says Laws.

—That’s the only thing they’re
not
doing.

—Yet. Let’s get the money and get out of here.

—Hector wants us to stay.

—I’m not staying. You can.

—We’re a team.

—We’re way outnumbered, partner.

“So we climb the stairs to the luxury box as usual. We go in. Rocky and three of his shotgunners stand guard at the windows while Camilla locks the sliding glass door and Hector begins pouring shots of something from a dark blue bottle with no label on it.

“They want to party and Terry and I just want to get the money and get the hell out of there. But the luggage is right where it’s supposed to be, and the unloading and weighing and vacuum sealing and repacking go smoothly. Four hundred and eight thousand dollars—an all-time high. Avalos predicts that Herredia will give us all a bonus, yes, yes, yes, a bonus
grande
! He’s drunk as I’ve ever seen him, and still lucid.

“I stand behind the sliding glass door and look down on the action. I wonder if God feels this way, gazing upon Earth. What a world: a brindle pit bull is tearing into a smaller, black dog, and the two factions of the crowd are bellowing against each other as if their lives are in the balance. High up in the bleachers someone collapses and they load his limp body down the crowd but nobody bothers to stand, they just pass him along hand to hand like a big bag of beans. When he gets to the bottom a couple of young
vatos
drag him into a walkway between the bleachers, then hustle back to their seats.

“Now the brindle has the black dog by the throat and the smaller dog is tight to the brindle’s leg but both animals are so exhausted they can only lie there, breathing hard. Did you know that dogs in combat sometimes sleep for several minutes right in the middle of a fight, an instinctive symbiosis before mustering their energies again to kill each other? Well, they do. Then the black dog lets go of the leg and the brindle is able to stand and bore its bloody head into the throat of the smaller dog. And then he starts that savage shaking that pit bulls do. I have to squint it’s so hard to watch, being a dog man myself. I whistle something. The crowd is screaming for death but the black dog’s owner finally throws in a white rag, then two men wearing elbow-high welder’s gloves jump the pit walls and force apart the dogs.