The Renegades

34

That afternoon Draper put on his reservist’s uniform and drove to Cal State Los Angeles to participate in the fourteenth annual “Career Crusade.”

He walked past exhibits set up by the various municipalities, corporations, trade unions and employment services. The city of Los Angeles had a large tent, as did Santa Monica and Long Beach. The Los Angeles Times had a good-sized tent also, and hundreds of newspapers for giveaway. The Retail Clerks Union exhibit was bustling. There was even a booth for the Musicians’ Local, featuring a motley bunch of apparent musical artists, and one magnificently lovely young redhead who tracked him from behind her sunglasses as he walked by and nodded at her. Draper had never thought of musicians as organized labor.

In the LASD tent he shook hands with Sergeants Beverly Cresta and Mike Grgich, and several uniformed deputies. A newish cruiser was parked in the shade, freshly washed and waxed, doors open and windows down. Cresta had put together a bulletin board with pictures and articles about the Sheriff’s Department, and a divisional breakdown with lists of various job descriptions and salary ranges. Grgich sat beside a large monitor that played a Sheriff’s Academy promotional video on a loop. Grgich was stout and muscular and reminded Draper of his old partner, but when Draper shook his hand he felt the very distinct aura of contempt coming off the man. It was a common reaction to reservists.

He took a seat behind a folding table littered with brochures and promotional LASD decals and applications fastened to clipboards. The day was cool but the sun was bright so he put on his shades and tried to look friendly and welcoming. Draper had personally recruited four people to his department. Two were now deputies, one was enrolled in the academy, one had washed out last winter. None of the three was particularly promising to Draper-they were straight, dull and uninterested in bettering themselves outside the rules of the department. Perfect law enforcers. But who knew? If he kept talking to the young men and women of L.A., he was bound to find a person with the same ambition, courage and dedication to self that had gotten him to where he was today.

Draper understood that one person was only one person, and could only accomplish so much. But two people were much more than just twice as many. Two were a force, and could easily become three and four or five, and a force could do things that one man could only imagine. The bigger your force was, the better, up to a point, of course.

He let the sun warm his face and thought of the Renegades, and the small steps they had taken a decade ago, before they were turned against each other and busted and outlawed. He understood that an ankle tattoo could mean much more than just membership in a clan within the department-it could mean power, breadth and capacity. Draper knew he could lead the New Renegades, if he could only find them. He had had a start with Terry, and now he was ready to pick up where he and Terry had left off.

A stoop-shouldered young man with a cadaverous complexion examined a “Physical Requirements” pamphlet, set it back on the table and tapped it thoughtfully, then walked away.

A big-bodied blond woman came up to Draper. “What’s the starting pay?”

“Four thousand and eighty-three dollars a month for a sworn deputy,” he said. “Support staff and technical start around two thousand.”

“So you don’t get rich working for the sheriffs.”

“Who told you you’d get rich?”

“I want riches.”

“Why?”

“I believe I deserve them.”

“You deserve nothing.”

Draper saw Grgich look his way.

“What I mean,” he said, “is that few people get rich working for other people. And there are other rewards in law enforcement.”

She shrugged and walked off.

Emblematic, he thought. There was no shortage of desire for riches out there, but so few people had the intelligence to find a way to accumulate wealth, and fewer still had the drive and energy to make a profitable idea real.

“So, what’s the starting pay?”

The question was delivered to mock the pugnacious tone that the big woman had used, but it was a man’s voice. Draper recognized it. He looked up at the boy. He was tall and built well, wore his black hair long and a neat goatee. The pretty, red-haired musician was with him. She wore a long black coat, jeans that were worn thin at her thighs, and red cowboy boots. She studied Draper from behind her sunglasses.

“Well, it hasn’t gone up in the last thirty seconds,” said Draper, with a smile.

“Four grand to risk your life every day?”

“And guess what? If you don’t get fired, you get raises. Are you a student?” asked Draper.

“Was. I can’t sit still all day and not learn one thing I don’t already know.”

“So you know it all?”

The boy looked hard at him. “I know more than some bored reservist like you.”

Draper stared at him but the kid wouldn’t look away. Instead he either smiled or smirked-it was hard to tell. Draper was aware of Grgich’s interest and chose to ignore him.

“Try me,” said the boy.

“Come on,” said the musician.

“No,” said the boy. “Ask me something and see if I know the answer. It’s got to be something you know the answer to, not some bullshit fantasy question like a second-grader would come up with.”

Draper sat back and crossed his arms. He sensed Grgich’s critical attention but didn’t care. Last night he had played solitaire with a deck of cards before going to bed. “What famous king is represented by the king of hearts?”

“Charlemagne. The king of diamonds is Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great is the king of clubs, and the king of spades is David.”

“Where is the first historical reference to a place called California?”

“A Spanish novel written in 1500. Montalvo. My mother was a history teacher, so you’re shit out of luck on stuff like that.”

“He’s not lying,” said the redhead.

Draper laughed. “Okay, okay. A way to measure time that is based on the motion of Earth?”

“Sidereal time. Nobody uses it but astronomers.”

“Then what is an astronomical unit?”

“The Earth’s average distance from the sun-ninety-two million, nine hundred and sixty thousand miles.”

“Frontolysis.”

“The breakup of a storm front. Frontogenesis is the formation of one.”

“The Mojave green rattlesnake has what type of venom?”

“A unique mix of hemotoxic and neurotoxic. It’s the only crotalid that has such a venom.”

“He used to collect snakes and lizards when he was a boy,” said the musician. “Made up a whole list of the Latin names.”

“What are you”-Draper smiled-“his acolyte? You follow this kid around and worship him?”

“Mostly it’s he who worships me.”

Grgich laughed aloud, and scooted his chair a small bit closer to Draper.

Draper watched the girl smile and wondered again what her eyes looked like behind the sunglasses. Then, as if on cue, she propped them up on her head and looked down at him with lovely blue eyes. He searched them for weakness while he smiled back.

“You should obviously know the average number of hairs on a redhead’s head,” said Draper.

“Ninety thousand,” said the boy. “Blondes have the densest growth, with one hundred and twenty thousand. I read that magazine article, too. But I wondered how they did the counts.”

“Quit showing off, you dolts,” said the girl. She had a smoky voice and a creamy complexion and a strong neck. “You’re supposed to be recruiting us. So, do you like being a deputy?”

“I love it,” said Draper.

“What about the danger and low pay?”

“There’s less danger and more money than you think. Do you like being a musician? What instrument do you play?”

“Guitar, piano and harp.”

“Harp. Like an angel?”

“I’ve never seen an angel play one.”

He stood and offered his hand to the boy. “I’m Coleman Draper.”

“Bradley Jones. This is Erin McKenna.”

“Last question for you, boy genius,” said Draper. “Are you even slightly interested in a career with the LASD?”

“I’m slightly interested in just about everything.”

“We should talk.”

“We are talking.”

“After this thing.”

Bradley Jones checked his watch. “We’ll be back.”

They were back at sundown. Draper was collecting things from the table and putting them into one of Sergeant Grgich’s boxes. Grgich ignored him and made a show of stepping in front of Draper to shake hands with Bradley and Erin and make conversation in an overly loud voice.

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.