L.A. Outlaws by T. Jefferson Parker

Author:T. Jefferson Parker [Parker, T. Jefferson]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781615513604
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2008-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

24

Hood's first and only crime spree, and his first thoughts of becoming a cop someday, both occurred when he was sixteen.

He'd gotten his driver's license and the world was open to him through the ancient Chevrolet that he had bought from a neighbor with saved money.

His father had shown him how to pull the block and pistons to be ground at an auto shop, had helped him rebuild the carburetor and put in the new oil pump, radiator, solenoid assembly and brakes.

As they worked, his father asked Hood what he wanted to do with his life, and Hood said be a cop, maybe, because he liked the TV shows about them and the idea that you joined a department of people who became your friends. His father, as a municipal employee himself, praised the medical benefits and retirement packages offered to Bakersfield policemen and agreed that there was plenty of "camaraderie" in law enforcement.

When the car was finished, Hood had not one penny left for paint, but the engine and tranny were sound and the retreads still had some miles on them. It had a radio that pulled local FM stations and the AM news stations out of L.A., and a cassette deck.

He was free.

It was a summer night, a Friday. Hood had a full tank of gas and some metal on, and his parents had given him permission to overnight with a friend.

He drove through downtown with the window open and his elbow on the door and a cigarette in his lips and wondered what he really would do with his life, given that he was sixteen and there was lots of life ahead. He cruised the East Hills Mall parking lot and watched the pretty girls and knew that whatever he did with his life, it was going to include one of them. Girls liked cops, right? He smiled and waved at some, tried to say hello, but his voice stuck high in his throat like something he'd forgotten to chew.

Back on the boulevard Hood realized that the trouble with law enforcement was that he'd always liked outlaws.

He'd always wondered what it would be like to be one, to walk alertly through space and time following his own code and no other. He'd always silently pulled for the bad guys.

When he saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as an eight-year-old, he'd thought it was the most powerful movie he'd ever seen, though his mother said, "The chuckleheads got what they deserved."

In seventh grade, when the genuinely tough kids began getting expelled from school, he'd secretly admired them.

When a local man had been arrested for stealing horses from a Bakersfield rancher, Hood had recognized him immediately on the news--he was the cool guy who worked at the bike store, the young guy with the old voice who'd talk chicks and liquor while he adjusted the brake cables and chain on Hood's Schwinn for free. Hood wrote him an anonymous letter, care of the Kern County Jail, telling the bike shop dude to hang tough.

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