L. A. Outlaws

I do an hour of hapkido with Qui

I check into the Mondrian on Sunset and call Hood.

“Charlie.” There’s a pause. I figure there might be a few of them.

“Hi, Suza

“How much do you miss me?”

“More than a little.”

“Catch any bad guys?”

“Only you.”

“You’ve got me all wrong, Charlie.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“They kicked me off homicide. I’m back on patrol until I get auto theft. So if Allison keeps up her high jinks I might get a shot at her.”

“I hope you don’t mean with a gun.”

“No, I mean give her a shot at due process and getting her life back together.”

“What makes you think she needs to get her life back together?”

“She needs her life period.”

“She does take some risks.”

“If you just came in and spilled it, hired Ruth to represent you, you might do pretty well.”

“I’m i

Hood is silent.

“What if Allison disappeared?” I ask.

Another pause. The money pause.

“I wondered about that,” he says.

“Say she went away, Charlie. Adios. The public wonders, then they get interested in someone else. You spend some time with me and the boys. Come down to Valley Center on weekends and holidays-you’ll love it there. We have a pond with bass and the neighbors have horses we can ride, just like you used to do in Bakersfield. Ernest is going to be okay with how things are. I’m going to set him up with a dressage rider who needs to experience a real ride. So here’s the deal, Charlie: the deputy and the teacher, who met by chance on the night of one of L.A.’s worst crimes, fall in love.”

Hood chuckles. “Yeah. I thought of all that. Except the dressage rider.”

“What do you think?”

“I won’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“It has to do with what I believe in.”

“Tell me what you believe in.”

“I’d like to.”

“Can I come over?”

Hood’s apartment in Silver Lake is like Hood: tall and narrow and neat. It’s an older place, with wainscoting, wall cornices and a high, stamped-aluminum ceiling. The furniture looks cheap and new. He’s got a few books and a bunch of music and Ansel Adams pictures on the walls.

He follows my eye and says that’s Yosemite in winter and I try very hard not to but I step across the room and put my arms around him. Next thing I’m on the floor looking up at Hood’s face above me haloed by the ceiling lamp. His expression is serious. We’re slightly slower about it than before, there’s some acknowledgment in it, some awareness of a shared history, and it’s good, fantastically good.

Later he brings a bottle of wine and two glasses back to the bedroom. I pull up with the sheet around me and he tells me about the Iraqi man and his three boys shot to death by seven soldiers and Le

When Hood is done with the story, or I think he’s done with it, he takes a Bible from the drawer of his nightstand and opens it up where there’s a folded piece of paper to hold the place and I figure it’s time for Psalms or maybe Job, but he hands me the paper and sets the Bible down.

I unfold it and he explains it’s a list that Le

“I think about that piece of paper sometimes,” says Hood. “Some days I think I’ll call the navy and tell them what I’ve learned. Other days, not.”

“Let it go, Hood. You did the right thing. Our soldiers should never have been there in the first place.”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s the whole point-it should never have happened.”

“All that matters is what happens. I never thought we should have gone in there either but rules don’t get suspended because of what you think. Murder is the same thing in Anbar as it is in L.A. I know those soldiers were furious and scared. You can’t even believe the pressure that builds up. You’re surrounded by betrayal and ugliness and hatred. The heat and the dust and the blood. It gets into you and you have to do something. For those guys, the four dead Iraqis were that something.”

“That’s why you did the right thing, Charlie. Those soldiers were put into an unwi

He looks at me. “No. If you make murder okay you make everything okay. And you tilt the world to an angle where you can’t build anything. Nothing.”

“You are not God and you are not your own judge.”

“I am very much my own judge, Suza

Hood refolds the list of names and sets it back in his Bible. I watch his upper body, the indentation of his backbone and the rounded straps of muscle that run alongside it. He’s got a cool mole and I touch it.

He turns off the light and gets into bed beside me and pulls the sheet up and we’re alone in the near darkness. His voice is just a whisper.

“I’m sorry,” says Hood.

I know there’s no reason to argue with him. Or to deny what he knows. He has seen me. Seen. Hood is Hood and he’s got the Man Thing. Nothing sneaky about him. It’s my turn to whisper now but the words sound so loud to me.

“You can’t prove anything. And your sheriff buddies can’t. And the DA can’t.”

His heart beats faster and harder. I set my cheek against his chest. “Suza

“The war used up all your forgiveness?”

“It used up all my something.”

Hood’s heart is going strong. I put my nose next to his ear, the same place I put it down in Valley Center.

It’s an empty feeling when your love isn’t enough. It’s supposed to be but sometimes it’s not. I know that Hood’s past has shaped him, and that my past has shaped me. These are powerful things. You can enlist in them or rebel against them but in your heart you always know the truth of who you are and you ca