L. A. Outlaws Read Online Free PDF

and tapering up to the flat-top. A Mayan warrior, no doubt.
    He tries to fall in behind me, but I goose the seven liters and lose him in a roar of beautiful white tire smoke and rich gray exhaust.
    I hit Interstate 10 east. Things are too hot for me and Allison Murrieta in L.A. right now so I’m going home for a few days.
    Not to a hotel, to my real home.
    I stop in San Berdoo, park on a side street, take off the ’Vette plates and slide them into my satchel. I remove both plates from a very sweet black Ford F-150 and drop them down a storm drain. I replace them with a set of cold truck plates then quietly load my stuff from the Corvette—toolbox, suitcase, police radio, backpack with diamonds, etc.—into the bed of the truck.
    I can pull a lock and hotwire a stock car in just over a minute. Most don’t have alarms, but the few that do will stop when the engine starts up. That can be a long thirty seconds while the horn wails with you inside, and that’s where your nerves get tested. You beat LoJack by staging a hot car and waiting for the cops to show. If they don’t show in two days, it’s your car now, baby. People think the Club is insurmountable, but I just cut slots in the steering wheel with my carbide saw and pull the damned Club off. You have to replace the steering wheel at some point, but they’re relatively cheap.
    The truck purrs like a kitten and I hit the road for Interstate 15 south. The ’Vette had over twice the power, but I’d been driving it for five days and I get bored after five days of just about any car. And hot cars—even cold-plated ones—get risky.
    I’m looking forward to seeing my main man and my kids. It’s been a while. Or I could stop off and see a friend of mine, give him a cute little diamond to put in his ear.
    Right now, though, I just want to get the hell out of L.A.
    I love this city, but there are too many dangerous people up here.

5
    C harlie Hood looked at the brightly lit office lobby that was never lit at three A.M. Then he climbed the steps to the front door and looked in at the stillness. He saw the overturned chair at the threshold of the office then looked down the hallway leading to the bay.
    He tried the door and felt the bolt knock against the lock plate and the housing. He looked out to where the 710 crossed over Interstate 10 and listened to the steady toneless roar of the cars.
    Hood took the catwalk around one side of the building and looked through the first window he came to, at the cars and the whirring fans and the lilting curtains sprayed in various colors and the dead people strewn across the floor. It looked like an Anbar alleyway in ’04.
    From the next window down he saw five more dead. He waited a long time for something to move other than the curtains and fan blades, but nothing did.
    He went back to the unit and called in backup and ten bodies’ worth of coroners, paramedics, the homicide and gang units.
    He sat on the metal office steps with his arms on his knees looking at the parked cars and wondering what kind of hell the Wilton Street Asian Boyz had stirred up.
    After a minute he lit three ground flares at the entrance of the parking area to keep the county vehicles from driving in and wrecking evidence.
     
     
     
    Within an hour there were thirteen men and women on scene and an entry/exit log taped to a front window next to the door that a deputy had forced open with a four-foot pry bar.
    The homicide sergeant was Bill Marlon. He was pale-complected and black-haired and not young. When the door fell open he motioned Hood in ahead of him, a courtesy to the first responder that surprised and pleased Hood.
    “Sign in, everybody,” said Marlon. “The usual—look, don’t touch.”
    Hood scribbled his name on the log and stepped in. He glanced at the office and the overturned chair. With his hand on the butt of his service weapon and his ears and eyes on alert, Hood moved through the open counter door then slowly down the hall toward