The Renegades

28

A few minutes later Hood had traded his Camaro to another deputy for a VW Jetta sedan and was driving it to Prestige German Auto. It was located in Venice, just a mile or so from the beach, in a mixed residential-business zone off of Venice Boulevard.

He waited in the lobby for a few minutes while a man cashed out two customers, gave them their keys and receipts, and thanked them sincerely for their business. His shirt was white and clean with an oval patch that said “Heinz.”

Hood looked at the premium wheels and tires on display, and the samples of the German strut systems for sale there, and the various aftermarket gadgets for German cars. But mostly he looked at the BMW, Daimler-Benz, Porsche, Audi and Volkswagen certificates earned by Prestige German’s expert technicians. There were six of them: Klaus Winer, Dieter Brink, Joe Medina, Eric Farrah, Richard Tossey and Heinz Meier. On the counter ahead of him he saw six small trays containing business cards for each.

When it was Hood’s turn he asked for an express oil and filter change. Heinz noted that Hood was not a regular customer but he had Hood read the estimate and sign the bottom. The estimate was for eighty-five dollars.

“Expensive,” he said.

“It is a twenty-point inspection.”

“That’s over four dollars a point. I heard you guys are good. The head gasket in this car will need to be replaced soon. If I’m happy with the oil job, I’ll make an appointment to bring it in.”

“Good, good. Thank you, Mr.-” He looked at the sheet. “Mr. Welborn.”

“I’ll be here if you have any questions.”

Hood handed him the keys and toured the store displays again, then sat in the lounge. There were four other customers watching TV and reading newspapers. There was free coffee and bottled water, and vending machines, and posters of sleek fast German cars on the walls.

When Heinz took the work order back into the repair bay, Hood went to the counter and got a card for each mechanic. Then he went outside and stood for a minute in the small parking lot. The day was cool and damp, with a layer of coastal haze. He walked around the block of mostly small stucco houses and old wooden fences. There was a day spa, a donut shop and a psychic’s parlor, open Tuesday to Friday from eleven a.m. to two p.m.

When he had almost come back around to the Prestige German lot Hood came to a six-foot textured concrete wall that nearly reached the sidewalk. There was an artsy wooden gate with an oxidized copper mail slot and an intercom. He waited for a break in the traffic on Amalfi, then stood on his toes and looked over. He looked at the small bungalow behind the garage on the Prestige German Auto lot. The shades were drawn and there was no car in the narrow driveway. Draper’s home, he thought, as on his application in 2005.

Back in the Prestige German office Hood studied the bill and asked about the brand of filter used.

“It is Volkswagen approved. And yes, the Jetta is leaking oil. It is likely from the head. It will not repair itself, hmmm?”

“I’d like to speak to the owner,” Hood said.

“Mr. Draper is not here. I am the one responsible for operations. There is a problem?”

“No problem at all. I just like to know the people I do business with.”

Heinz studied the young man before him, then reached into a tray and gave him one of his cards.

“I am Heinz Meier.”

Hood shook his hand, paid him in cash and left.

Back in the hole it took him only one hour to locate the Prestige German Auto mechanic that he was hoping to find.

Eric Farrah had skipped bail on a shoplifting charge, then vanished from his job at Valley BMW in Encino eight months ago. He was accused of stealing a box of Fuente cigars valued at two hundred dollars. His failure to appear would cost him five thousand dollars and a heart-to-heart conversation with Charles Robert Hood. He was twenty-two, and looked like a kid that Hood had gone to high school with in Bakersfield, a talented bronco rider.

At closing time, Hood tailed Farrah from Prestige German, down Amalfi, to his car. When Farrah heard him approaching he turned and Hood handed him a cigar.

“That’s a Fuente like the ones you bagged. I’m a cop. Don’t run.”

“Fuck. Shit.”

“Don’t use up all your best dialogue. Give me your car keys.”

Farrah glared at Hood, then jammed a hand into the pocket of his grease-stained pants and dropped a heavy set of keys into Hood’s palm. Hood hit UNLOCK on the key fob twice and the doors of Farrah’s BMW unlocked with a clunk. Hood opened the passenger-side door and motioned to him. Farrah thought once more about running, Hood guessed, then decided against it and got in.

Hood climbed into the driver’s side and started the engine. “No use calling attention to ourselves.”

“Man? Who are you? Where’s your badge?”

“I’m going to drive around this corner and park.”

“Oh, man. This is the genuine shits.”

Hood parked one block over under a magnolia tree. He badged Eric Farrah and told him who he was.

“You and I are going to talk, Eric. If you do well, I’m going to get out of this car and walk away and you might not see me again. If you don’t, I’m going to drive you to jail. Even if you spring for a good lawyer you’ll spend a few weeks in lockup because the judge won’t give you bail twice, and you’ve got failure to appear on top of the shoplifting. You’ll be inside even longer if you wait for a public defender, but you’ll save money. That’s how it works. Either way, you’re free to keep that cigar I gave you.”

Eric Farrah was a pink-skinned young man with fuzzy white whiskers and expressive blue eyes. His hair was curly and white. “Talk about what?”

“Coleman Draper.”

Farrah looked at him, his mouth open just a little. First there was doubt on his face. Then relief. Then a crafty smile. “I can do that.”

“I thought you could.”

“What did he do?”

“That’s the last question you’re going to ask.”

Farrah told Hood that he’d worked for Prestige German for seven months. He’d arranged with buddies at Valley BMW not to rat him out when Heinz called to confirm his good standing as a former employee and skill as a mechanic. After impressing Heinz, he met Coleman Draper the next day. They had coffee in Draper’s office, which was down the hallway behind the lobby. He was younger than Farrah had expected. Draper had seemed distracted but interested in him: hometown, schools, travel, plans for his life. They talked briefly about the repair and maintenance of German cars, the concept of customer satisfaction, then about salary and benefits and responsibilities.

“Then out of nowhere he asked me how long I’d been ducking the cops. I said I didn’t know what he was talking about, and he said I had fugitive written all over my face. So I told him. He shook his head like he was disappointed. He said never risk jail for cigars. We talked awhile. The office walls had framed photographs by a guy named Helmut. Really horny stuff. Then Mr. Draper just stood up and offered me his hand and said I would start tomorrow. He said if I felt the need to steal cigars again, come talk to him about it. He said if I lifted so much as a spark plug from him he’d have my arms broken. I believed him.”

“Have you felt like stealing cigars again?”

“No. I wouldn’t have stolen them in the first place except I was drunk. I had the money. A bad day. It just happened.”

“How often do you see him?” Hood asked.

“Maybe…once a month. It’s a minute here, a minute there. He’ll come in and hang around and watch us once in a while. Talk a little, maybe take a look at what we’re doing. He’s an awesome mechanic. He could strip a Porsche down to its chassis and put it back together blindfolded.”

“Ever socialize, beers after work, lunch?”

“He took us to lunch at the West Beach for Christmas. The people there knew him. Hostess and waitresses all over him. Total babes. He paid for everything. He mostly listened. The Germans love to talk. I think he’s entertained by them. The thing about Mr. Draper is he’s never all there. Always has something else on his mind. That doesn’t mean he’s not paying attention, though. He’s just paying attention to more than one thing.”

“The other mechanics talk about him. What have you learned?”

“Some of the Germans think he’s gay. I don’t. Some of the guys think he used to be a crook, and some of them think he used to be a cop. And based on the way he knew I was in trouble, I’d say it’s one or the other. He pays us really well, and we get good bennies and time off, but we all understand that if we swipe anything or skim the register, we’re in genuine deep shit. Joe saw him at LAX getting out of a Town Car. Klaus saw him in Laguna at a restaurant.”

“What restaurant?”

“Klaus never said.”

Hood looked out at the Venice street, the crowded houses and the cracked sidewalk and the power lines sagging above. Juliet, he thought. Laguna hostess or waitress.

“Here’s something,” said Farrah. “One night last August I got into a fight with my girlfriend and I had to get out of the apartment. We were living on Washington, so I walked up and over toward work-just somewhere to go where she wasn’t. I bought a sixer and figured I’d use my key and sit in the employees’ patio behind the bays. It’s just a concrete slab and an umbrella and a picnic table and a piston ashtray. It’s got a chain-link fence with the privacy slats in it because the house on the other side is owned by Draper. Two of the slats are torn up near the top and from the table you can see the driveway and garage and front part of the house. So I’ve got three dead soldiers and here comes a car up the driveway to Mr. Draper’s house. It’s around ten. And I know I’m not really supposed to be there, but I’ve left the patio lights off so I just sit still in the dark and watch through the hole. It’s Mr. Draper’s M5-2000, black on black, Dinan chip, five-hundred-plus horses and you can hear every one of them. Then right behind it comes this red F-250 extended cab, with a camper shell and a heavy-duty tow package. Mr. Draper gets out of his car, and this big muscle dude gets out of the truck. They don’t talk. Mr. Draper opens the Beemer trunk and Muscle Beach opens the liftgate and the tailgate on the Ford. They take two rolling luggage bags out of the M5 trunk, and two more out of the back, and slide them into the bed of the truck. They’re big bags and they look about medium weight from the way they handle them. Then Mr. Draper opens his garage and he brings out three clear plastic tubs. It’s fishing gear-big shiny reels and tackle and short, thick rods. Mr. Draper and Muscle Beach, they’ve got this efficiency thing going. They don’t say anything. They move quickly but they’re not in a hurry. It looks like they’ve done it before, and it’s something important. They don’t act like two buddies going fishing. They don’t exactly look it, either. Because it’s a warm night and they’re dressed casual, jeans and sport shirts, and they’re both packing pistols in cop-style hip holsters, up high on the belt like detectives. Like you are.”

“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.