“Last night, well. Come on up. These dogs bite but only when they’re told.”
“Can you tell them to roll over and wag their stumps?”
“They don’t do tricks.”
Hood makes the porch, looks at me, the dogs, the food bowls lined up in the shade. Hood’s a one-thing-at-a-time guy, thinks he is anyway.
I let him in, introduce him to Ernest and Kenny. Hood and Ernest do the man-stare, but after a long second Hood unwraps his sunglasses and averts his gaze respectfully, then turns his attention to the infant on Ernest’s knee. Kenny burps something and his eyes wobble like loose buttons.
“This will just take a few minutes,” says Hood.
“You guys can have the table,” says Ernest. “I’ll get Kenny ready. See ya, Suze.”
Ernest swings Kenny up into one of his big arms and I watch him walk out. The bottoms and rims of his feet are pale and the rest of him is a splendid island bronze. He’s from Oahu. He’s got a ready smile and a skein of island tattoos across the back of his shoulders. I met him at a luau, where he danced with a spear. You could get your picture taken with the dancers after the show and we got to talking. A spear chucker. Months later, he showed me how he could throw that thing-with unbelievable power and accuracy, for a spear anyway. Then came Kenny.
Hood and I sit across from each other at the long picnic table and he lays it on me: the Asian Boyz, Mara Salvatrucha and diamond broker Barry Cohen. Hood is relaxed, calm and intense. He seems like an old guy in a thirty-year-old body, a pretty damned nice combination if you ask me. He wants to know everything I saw in the area of Miracle Auto Body last night, even the smallest little detail can be a help. I stare past his shoulder to a wall, where I’ve tacked some of my middle son’s drawings and paintings. Jordan. He’s ten and a very good artist.
Hood’s got the cover of his notepad open and his pen in his hand. “Did you see anything unusual, out of place? Put yourself back there. Sometimes things will-”
I nod. “I saw an old Lincoln Continental, once before you stopped me and once after. First time, it was pulled off the road. That count as unusual?”
“Did you see the driver?”
“Just a guy.”
“Where did you see him pulled over?”
“I don’t know. In the dark. Beside the road. Sorry, I’m a history teacher, not a cop.”
“What year was the car?”
“Late seventies. Just before the redesign.”
Hood looks at me with surprise and doubt. He wants all the stats so I give them to him: the Continental was black, and shiny like it was just washed, and the chrome really popped because that was the last of the great Detroit chrome years, and I tell Hood I couldn’t guess the age of the guy inside, just that he had this totally geo-dynamic planed-off flat-top haircut, and of course I know Hood is all over this, he’s thinking bad guy, another one of the Asian Boyz or Mara Salvatrucha, an answer to the mystery of the dead diamond broker but no diamonds. To build intrigue I give the Lincoln driver a cell phone, glad to be of assistance to law enforcement.
“I saw that car go past when I was talking to you,” says Hood. “Slowly.”
I say nothing for a moment. I know Hood’s hot for the Lincoln.
“What was a diamond broker doing with all these bad people?” I ask.
“We don’t know.”
Hood writes slowly and smoothly. I like the way he holds his pen. Then he looks at me for a moment, same look as when I said the car was a late-seventies Continental.
“What.”
“Last night I was surprised you knew what the yellow Corvette had in it,” he says. “Most people, they don’t know which engine they’ve got.”
“You mean most women don’t know.”
“No, women almost never know.” He’s smiling now. “I didn’t see it parked out front.”
“I won’t park it outside. If I have to explain that, you’re simple enough to hide your own Easter eggs.”
Hood laughs quietly. It’s an old man’s chuckle behind a young man’s smile.
“And you surprised me just now about the Continental, before the redesign. You know your cars.”
“Just the ones I like.”
“Tell me about the Lincoln again. How far away was it from where I pulled you over?”
I tell him a maybe a few hundred yards, but it was dark and late and I was turned around, thinking I’d made a wrong turn but not sure. Hood writes something more in his handy little pad.
“You never told me your first name,” I say.
“It’s Charlie. Sorry.”
“You know I’m thirty-two from my CDL. How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“Bakersfield High, I’ll bet.”
Hood clears his throat and nods. “How do you know that?”
“It’s something about you. Your ears, maybe.”
“Explain what.”
“I can’t. But I love Merle Haggard. I graduated from high school in Bakersfield, too. It was Vista West Continuation, where the pregnant girls go. We were the Ga tors.”
I smile at him. This makes him uneasy.
“I think we got offtrack.”
“What else do you want to know?”
“Exactly what happened at Miracle.”
“Can’t help you there, Charlie. Is it Charles?”
“Charles Robert.”
Just then my eldest son slams through the door. He’s sixteen but looks nineteen, a beautiful boy. Bradley’s dad was beautiful but worthless. My middle son, Jordan, has a different father than Bradley, and of course baby Kenny’s father is Ernest. It’s all pretty simple. I’ve never married and I’ve named my children after me. Jones. I digress.
“Mom,” he says. He’s wearing a trucker’s cap pulled down low over his long black hair. “There’s nothing I can do with the throttle cable.”
He looks at Hood a beat longer than he looks at most people, including me.
“So, now what?” he grunts.
“So do what you can with it, Bradley. A Ford is a Ford. This is Charlie Hood. He’s a cop.”
“Hi,” Bradley says.
“Hi,” says Hood. “A Sheriff’s deputy, actually- L.A. County.”
“I’m thinking LAPD. When I’m old enough.”
“They need good people.”
“The pedal sucks, Mom,” Bradley says to me. “Can I just go boarding?”
“Sure,” I say. “Thanks for looking at it. You put the new wheels and tires on the Cyclone?”
“Before you even got out of bed.”
“How do they look?”
“The shoes are too small but the meats are sick.”
“Awesome. Thanks, son.”
“Sheriff ’s pay good?” Bradley asks Hood.
“Fair.”
“Good as the cops?”
“About the same,” says Hood. “But we get better cars and a little more open road to drive them on.”
“I’m good with large-caliber handguns.”
Hood raises his eyebrows.
“Nice IROC,” says my son.
“Thanks. I bored and stroked it, goosed out another thirty horse.”
“Glasspaks?”
“Yeah, first thing I added.”
“I could tell by the sound.”
Bradley hesitates then leaves, letting the screen door slam behind him. A front of hot air floats in from outside. In the sudden silence Hood closes his notepad. I see him looking past me now into the living room, a mess of a place, kind of a Polynesian party room in honor of Ernest. It’s got a very nice tiki bar.
“You’re climbing the ladder pretty quickly,” I tell Hood. “Last night you were a patrolman and now you’re a detective.”
“They moved me up for the Auto Body thing. This week I’m both.”
“Bet they won’t pay you twice.”
Hood smiles and shakes his head.
For about two seconds I wonder if I should say what I want to say. If it takes longer than two seconds to give yourself permission to speak, then your rule book is getting overlong. I hate rules.
“I like the way you look, C. Hood. I like your voice and your attitude. I teach eighth-grade history but I’m nothing like the eighth-grade teachers you had. So I think you ought to hit the road, keep yourself out of trouble. That’s the last time I’ll make the slightest effort to protect you.”