I hear him cursing, and the sharp squeak of steel caught in lumber. I take the next two fences vault style, with Cañonita in my mouth and both hands braced on the fence tops and my arms burning as they push me up and over.
I tumble onto the wet grass of a front yard and I can see the boulevard just a hundred yards away now and I roll and stand and run, digging down for everything I’ve got. I’m drenched in sweat. Running to stay in shape is different than running to stay alive.
When I look behind me I see no one.
I make Hawthorne Boulevard, press Cañonita into my pocket and put out my thumb.
The third car pulls over and the passenger window goes down. Two boys in the front, white shirts, ties, young Republican haircuts.
“Do you need help?”
“I need to get in your car. Then I need to make one call, and I need you two guys to wait with me while Triple A comes.”
They look at each other, then the nearest one nods.
Yep, Jehovah’s Witnesses in a five-year-old Malibu. A gift from heaven. I open the door and push aside a bound bundle of The Watchtower and sit.
“Where’s your car, ma’am?”
“Let’s give it a few minutes. There’s a bad person involved. He ripped my blouse. How about donuts? You guys like donuts?”
“Yes, we do. There’s a Winchell’s up here.”
And plenty of cops.
“Perfect,” I say, digging my phone out of the satchel.
Back at the airport Marriott, door locked and chain in place, and reloaded Cañonita on the bathroom counter, I sit on the edge of the tub in the dark with my feet in the warm soapy water. There are cuts and splinters all over them and my heels are badly bruised. It hurts.
But my brain hurts worse because I’m trying to figure out how Lupercio always seems to know where I am and I really don’t like the answer I’m getting.
How did he know about Miracle Auto Body? How did he know about Valley Center and Torrance?
Be logical here.
Okay, maybe Amanda, the clerk who checked me into the Residence Inn, was a friend of Lupercio’s. She was a plump redhead who looked about twenty and was reading a Harlequin romance when I walked up to the front desk. You tell me.
Or, maybe someone else at the Residence Inn was a friend of Lupercio’s-a higher-up who could scan the computer for the names of the guests checking in and out. Sure, maybe. But Lupercio is freelance. He works alone. He murdered half of his own gang. So how many friends does he have in how many hotels in a city with hundreds and hundreds of them? You tell me that, too.
I didn’t tell anyone where I was staying. Not Ernest, no one.
Now consider this: Handsome Hood and Lupercio are related by time and space. Hood shows up at Miracle Auto Body; Lupercio is there, too. Hood shows up at my home in Valley Center; Lupercio is right on his heels. Hood suggests the Residence Inn for a good night’s sleep and who should be there waiting for me?
They connect. So, maybe Hood was covering Lupercio at Miracle Auto Body that night. That’s why he rousted me-just in case I’d seen something. Man, did I-and I was dumb enough to tell him all about it. He knew I lived in Valley Center and he knew I’d come back to the Residence Inn. On the beach in Laguna he pretty much accused me of taking the diamonds, so maybe he knew about them all along.
Hood buttered my toast in the Hotel Laguna but maybe the heavy secret inside his heart was that I was about to be killed-no witness to Lupercio that night, no witness to himself. And there’s this, too: If Hood is tight with Lupercio and if he reasons like I’ve reasoned, he knows that I’ve got the diamonds, and he knows I’ll keep them close, in the very possible case that I need to buy my life with them. Thus, close enough for them to find. Then they’ve got no witness and my forty-five thousand dollars’ worth of rocks in their pockets.
I lift my feet from the water and towel them off. They hurt like hell. I hope there’s nothing stuck in them. I see Lupercio’s machete flashing like lightning above me and then hear the dry bark of the metal splitting wood. Probably would have sounded about the same splitting my arm. I turn on the light and the bathtub water is pink. I hobble into the bedroom and lie down and look at the clock radio. My feet hurt and I want my mother, even though she probably wouldn’t be too happy with me.
If I’m right about Hood and Lupercio then I’m wrong about Hood. It would disappoint me to think that my judgment could be so poor. But I’d rather be disappointed than dismembered. I thought I’d outgrown my attraction for cute losers sixteen years ago when I threw out Bradley’s father for taking his niece to our bed. Before I threw him out I shot his bare ass with a.22 pistol. The bullet went right through both cheeks, left big ugly wounds. Made me feel better. He’s still afraid of me, which should be the natural order of things with guys like him.
But Hood? I hope I’m figuring wrong. I want to be wrong.
It’s late. I can see the gray ellipse of morning coming through the slit in the drawn blinds. I can hear the murmur of L.A. around me and the roar of the jets and the thumping of closing doors and the distant ding of the elevator.
I get Hood on his cell.
“Hi, Hood.”
“Where are you?”
“Not telling, don’t ask.”
“I’ve been calling all night.”
“My good night’s sleep in Torrance just about got me killed. Lupercio came a few inches from cutting my arm off with that machete. Where were you when I needed you?”
“On patrol. I drove the Residence lot at six o’clock and once again every hour until midnight. I knocked on the door of your room each time. Where were you?”
“Never saw the old black Lincoln?”
Silence then and I wonder what Hood is thinking.
“I got there at twelve-thirty,” I say. “Lupercio pulled in right behind me. I ran through a fence to get away. He didn’t follow me in. He was there, waiting.”
“Goddamn, Suzanne.”
“Goddamn is right. I ran a mile barefoot on streets and sidewalks. I jumped a million fences. Everything hurts.”
“Have you checked your car for a location transponder? That’s a-”
“I know what it is, Hood.”
I can’t tell him how many cars I’ve stolen and driven since Miracle Auto Body, that you’d need a team of confederates just to keep those cars in transponders. This thought brings me a very brief smile. And I also can’t tell him that I checked Barry Cohen’s backpack for a transponder, too-just before I boosted the F- 150 in San Berdoo after I’d lost Lupercio and his lame-ass Lincoln at the signal at Eastern in City Terrace.
“Yes,” I say. “I checked.”
“How?”
“Got on my back, crawled under and looked.”
“Are you driving the Corvette?”
“You can’t crawl under that car. No. My old Sentra.”
“What about your purse, or a briefcase, or something you carry with you?”
“No transponders that I know of. When could he have put one in place, Hood? I saw him for a total of four seconds that night and we were never less than twenty feet apart.”
“You have to look again. Look everywhere again. They’re small now.”
I take a deep breath and let it out. Can’t believe how tired I am. “Hell’s bells.”
“Did you tell Ernest where you were?”
“No.”
“I’ll come get you.”
“I don’t know about you, Hood. Every time I see you, Lupercio shows up. Every time I see Lupercio, you’re in the picture, too. That really bothers me.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Then how did he know about the Residence Inn?”
“Hell, Suzanne.”
“Maybe someone you work with-your boss or something.”
“No.”
“Easy for you to say. But I was the one looking up at that machete. By the way, Lupercio’s got a new hairstyle. It’s a buzz.”
I hang up and call in for my messages. Ernest has called twice with full reports on how the boys are doing. Bradley caught a six-foot barrel at Oceanside, got tubed and came out. Jordan caught four fish off the pier. The dogs are fine. The Sequoia is leaking oil. Ernest misses me.