The Parker Trilogy Read online

  He felt weak and drained, like he was coming down with a cold with no other symptoms. That’s what taking all those pills did to you; they took a toll on your body, one way or another, helping with one thing while hurting you somewhere else.

  “It’s getting late. Time for you to go lay down, Father,” Carol said, lovingly but sternly. He knew better than to argue with her when she took that tone, so he smiled meekly, gave her a nod and retreated to his room.

  “My sister promised to bring some pozole by before I got off work. I’ll bring it to your room when she gets here, okay?” she added.

  “Yes, yes. Thanks, Carol. I’ll leave my door unlocked in case I fall asleep.”

  “That’s fine. And no eating those horrible Hot Pockets in the meantime! You understand?” she shouted after him.

  He nodded again before he disappeared down the hall and made his way to his room.

  Once inside, he left the door unlocked and took off his shirt. From there, it was all he could do to get to his bed and lay down. This was the other problem, besides the pills; he couldn’t take too many emotions anymore. His internal thoughts and feelings seemed to drain him more than any amount of physical strain. And, well, the last twenty-four hours had been a veritable triathlon of emotions, hadn’t it?

  He forced himself not to think of any of it, and that was actually quite easy. He was too tired to even begin.

  So, as he lay down and nestled his neck into his pillow, feeling the cotton coolness against his skin, he thought of Robert and Laura. Thanks to his dad, who had kept him out of the gangs, Robert was a construction worker currently employed at the high-rise project downtown at Eighth and Figueroa. It was a union job with benefits. Laura, meanwhile, was going to nursing school and wanted to start a family. Their eyes were eager, their hearts hopeful and their minds clouded. They were both still living at home, had no money saved and no idea of how to proceed in life. Marriage seemed like a natural next step, and then children after that.

  Father Soltera did as he always did; he listened before he counseled. This was the first of six meetings that they would have to partake in together before they could be married in the church. He usually reserved the first two for listening, the next two for discussing and the last two for counseling. They were both Catholic, so at least there wasn’t that hurdle to get over, though truth be told, in this neighborhood that was rarely an issue. Not too many other faiths had the desire to live in East Los Angeles.

  He needed a nap, no doubt about it. It would throw off his already fragile sleep pattern, but he had no other choice. His body was making a demand that he could not reject. He might awaken at 7:00 p.m. now, during Jeopardy or something, but at least then he’d have the chance to call Luisa and check in on her.

  He closed his eyes, but not for long.

  The first little girl appeared at the foot of his bed a few minutes later, just as he was beginning to nod off. He felt her before he saw her, and when he opened his eyes he very much wished he hadn’t. His breath catching in his chest, he tried to speak but no words would come.

  She was seven, maybe eight, in a white and blue Dora the Explorer nightgown, the left side of her face smeared with dry blood, her eyes empty and staring at him forlornly.

  His bedroom seemed to be glowing. From fire. From below.

  The second little girl shuffled in from the living room, wearing a t-shirt and shorts, to the foot of his bed, where she joined the first. Her hair was red and her face was beaten badly, both eyes blackened and her lower lip split. She was maybe ten or eleven, and he couldn’t imagine how she could’ve suffered this type of savagery.

  The third and fourth little girls, both with dark hair, one with brown eyes and the other with blue, followed next, holding hands. They had dark circles around their necks, with the odd finger shaped bruise here or there revealing that they’d been strangled, and they both wore matching pink bathrobes. Their feet scraped slowly on the carpet as they also took up residence at the foot of his bed.

  A fifth little girl walked in, in jeans and a Hello Kitty t-shirt, head down, wet hair covering her face and dripping onto the carpet. He noticed that her little hands were at her sides, motionless and pale. She came towards him, on the left side of his bed, and Father Soltera shouted in fear as he pushed himself up into a half-seated position against the wooden headboard, its grooves digging against his neck.

  The sixth little girl was the worst. About the same age as the rest, she was wearing a two-piece bikini, completely inappropriate for her age, and she’d been cut across the throat. The wound was partially healed, but as she walked to the left side of the bed and joined the girl in the Hello Kitty t-shirt, she looked up at him with bulging, hate-filled eyes, and the wound began to bleed a little.

  Father Soltera tried to scream, but the girl in the Hello Kitty t-shirt put a tiny index finger to her lips and said, “Shhhhhhhhhhh.” Then the index and middle fingers of her other hand danced in scissoring motion, back and forth.

  There was sudden pain on his face, cutting across his mouth, and when he reached up to see what it was he felt them: leather stitches. His lips had been sewn shut.

  This couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. He felt his heart beating so fast that he thought he was going to have a heart attack. No. This was a nightmare. That’s all it was. He’d laid down and fallen asleep. That’s all.

  Five more girls came into his room and took up residence on the right side of his bed. Two were in pants and shirts, two in skirts and blouses, with the remaining girl dressed in a blood-stained tan dress, one foot missing a shoe. Eleven. Eleven little girls. He knew that number from somewhere.

  No. From some . . . one.

  He was grappling with who it was when the two girls to his left began to speak. “Your fault,” they said, over and over, in unison, like a duo of tragedy.

  Father Soltera shook his head vigorously, equally in denial of what they were saying as he was of the notion that they were really there in the first place.

  The room was growing hotter by the second. He tried to get up, but couldn’t.

  “You’re too weak,” a woman’s voice said, in a hiss that silenced the girls.

  He saw her in the doorway of his room but his eyesight was failing him again. He squinted and was barely able to make out the features of her face; her big brown eyes, her tan complexion, her thin, red lips.

  No. It couldn’t be.

  His breathing was so shallow that each breath was getting jammed, for seconds at a time, in his lungs.

  Please. Father. No. It can’t be her.

  The woman moved into the room. Moved. Not walked. As if she were levitating a few inches off the carpet. When she finally came to a stop on his right, she softly climbed into bed next to him and looked into his face, like a lover.

  “Yessssss . . .” she said with a smile as she widened her eyes in glee. “A lover. Oh, how you’ve always wondered what one of those felt like, haven’t you, Father?”

  He tried to move away, but he couldn’t. She ran her fingers over his chest and he noticed that they were actually claws of exposed bone, carved into viciously sharp tips. “I’ve come for this, you know,” she said, taping her index finger over his heart. Then she licked her lips.

  He barely took note of her tongue due to the relief he was feeling from seeing, at last, her face up close. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t Gabriella. Thank goodness.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. Did you want it to be her?” she said with a wicked laugh. “Would that make it easier? You know, if she turned out to be evil . . . like you?”

  Father Soltera tried to shake his head. His arms. His legs. Nothing would move. He was paralyzed. So, this is what it feels like, he thought, before an acute sorrow flooded over him.

  “If that were true then you wouldn’t feel so bad, right? I mean, you can’t lead someone astray if they’re already bad, huh?”

  The woman before him now was beautiful. She had dark, narrow eyebrows over gray and black eyeshadow that ac
cented her long, curving eyelashes. Even her horribly empty black orb-like eyes did little to distract him from her refined cheeks, incredibly full lips and long black hair that flowed down her shoulders, thick and shiny.

  She was wearing a light green tank top. He did not look at her full chest. He wanted to. But he did not.

  “Ah. Now you want me, huh?” she laughed, but with bitterness this time. “Men. Truly the vilest of creatures ever created. First, you secretly desire her, and when that doesn’t happen, then it’s my tits you want, right . . . Father?”

  Father Soltera tried again to shake his head, managing the tiniest of movements in his neck.

  The two girls began the chant again. “Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.”

  The woman motioned her head at them and smiled. “You know who they are, don’t you . . . Popi?”

  He tried to plead with her through his closed lips, his voice bone dry. “Please. Please leave me—”

  “Ah, ah, ah,” she said, putting a skeletal index finger over her pouty lips. “No dodging this one. You do know who they are, silly. They’re the two the pervert got after you let him get away.”

  Father Soltera moaned. No. These girls. They can’t be.

  “The victims . . .”

  Of Joaquin Murietta.

  “Yes!” She sighed gleefully. “That was easy, right?”

  He felt dizzy.

  Her face went from happy to intense in the blink of an eye. “And these are the ones that will be waiting for you, when you die, old man. They will peel your skin off with their tiny fingers, one skinny strip at a time. And I will watch them do it, I swear.”

  He forced out one word, loudly. “No!” And in uttering it, he had torn at the stitches on his lips.

  She sighed as a look of disdain came over her face. “He got away from that silly little booth of yours, where all those pathetic sheep come to ask for forgiveness for their sins! Ha. If only they knew about your sins, right, Father?”

  The girls all giggled.

  She pursed her lips seductively. “Do you want me to be one of your sins?”

  Father Soltera again tried to shake his head, managing a little more movement this time.

  “No? That’s too bad,” she said with a pout. “Anyway, my friend Guero asked me come. He says you’re being a big bother and that I should help you feel things you don’t want to feel . . . make you remember things you don’t want to remember. It’s my specialty, you know.”

  Sorrow. Piercing regret. Shame. He began to cry.

  “Awwww,” she said. “Now don’t do that, silly. If you do, then you’ll get me all emotional and then . . .”

  She began to weep with him, but when he looked up she was smiling. Crying and smiling, as if she’d just been given joyous news.

  There was only one thing ruining that image, though: her tears.

  She was crying tears of blood.

  The little girls began to chant again as the room went dimmer and dimmer.

  “Keep crying, Father. Please,” she moaned. “Because your pain . . . oh . . . it hurts so good, baby.”

  Averting his eyes, Father Soltera stared at a crucifix he had next to his alarm clock. It helped, for a while.

  Until she covered his eyes with a boney hand and he screamed in pure, stark terror against the stench of her palm.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hector waited. On the fourth ring, Burro picked up. “Jefe?”

  “Yeah. You been callin’?”

  “Lots of times, man. Look. Can we talk? Please?”

  Hector was back in the recliner in the garage bay, all the cars and the crew gone, the smell of motor oil and grease all around him, held down by the air, which was thick with moisture. Just hearing Burro’s voice had filled him with anger again, but he kept it tamped down while he watched The Smiling Midget skipping between the puddles that had formed in the driveway. “Whatchyou gotta say?”

  “Hey. I’m sorry, man. For whatever I did.”

  “That’s how you gonna play it? By pretending you don’t know what you did?”

  “Look. I don’t—”

  “I ain’t got time for more lyin’ shit. Come clean or quit wasting my time.”

  “I don’t know what you’ve heard or what people have been telling you, boss. But—”

  “What would they be telling me, Burr-ito?”

  He sighed heavily into the phone.

  Hector waited. If Burro were smart, he would just come clean and take his punishment.

  “Okay, Hector. I’m sorry. I talked shit about Marisol when you were in the joint. She was playin’ you, dog. I didn’t like it. But I get it, man. Two weeks hurts like hell. But I get it.”

  Hector nodded. Burro was half-smart, at least. In truth, according to Chico, and later verified by Bennie, Burro had talked shit about Hector being played the fool in order to undermine his authority as the gang leader. Marisol was just the device by which he’d done it. But he was not arguing the punishment, which said a lot about how weak he knew his position was. Regardless, it was time for penance.

  “Listen, fool. You made me look bad and you know it—”

  “No! Jefe, listen—”

  “You interrupt me while I’m speaking one more damn time, and it’ll be four weeks.”

  Silence.

  “You chumped me out when I couldn’t do shit about it. Now? We squared that up last night, right?”

  “Yeah, man.” Two words, grunted in resignation.

  “You got something more to say? Now’s the time.”

  “It’s just . . . look, that dude had no right to move on her like that. He knew she was with someone. It’s about honor, dog.”

  The Smiling Midget stopped skipping, turned and flashed Hector two thumbs up. Hector smiled. It really was too damn easy.

  “Yeah. I know. So, you’re saying that he cost me face and that made you mad?”

  “Hell, yeah!”

  Bullshit. “Okay. But you cost me face too, right?”

  Another sigh. “Yeah.”

  “So, here’s how you make it right. You and you alone are gonna take care of his punk ass for me, you understand?”

  “What?” One word, but uttered with hope, not shock.

  “You get to be the one to defend my honor, understand? You do that, the slate between us is wiped clean.”

  “Okay. What you want me to do?”

  Dumbass. “I don’t know yet. It may be something simple or it may be something more.”

  Curtis had always taught Hector that when the shit got down to brass tacks, when orders had to be given and they were the ugly kind of orders, you never did them by phone unless it was a throwaway—and he was on his own cell right now—and you never did them in person unless it was one-on-one, no witnesses, and in a very loud place. Like a car with the stereo turned up, or a bowling alley. But Hector preferred right here, in the mechanics bay, the words spoken lips to ear while he pulled on the trigger of the air gun normally used for removing lug nuts off tires.

  He’d given ugly orders before, but he really did want more time to think about this one.

  “Okay, boss. Lemme know.”

  Then, because Curtis had also taught him never to ease up on punishments but always extend the rewards, Hector said, “Listen up. You do this, maybe we talk about widening your area.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. There’s a chunk in Silver Lake we ain’t gone into yet. We gotta make sure no one else has claimed it first.” Yeah. Wouldn’t want you getting hurt or anything Burr-ito. “But I don’t think anyone has. Least not anyone we care about. Could be lucrative.”

  “Damn hipsters, right?”

  “Yeah. But the domesticated ones. With real jobs, steady incomes and reputations to protect, know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Yes and no.”

  Hector smiled and shook his head. If you didn’t have the balls to say “no,” you just said “yes and no.” Dumb as a doorknob.

  “You get them hooked on H?
They got the money to keep spending, and then they’ll keep spending the money to avoid the embarrassment of admitting they’re hooked. Their pride will keep them paying up, long after the high starts wearing off.”

  “Gotcha. And . . . jefe? Thanks.”

  Hector hung up on him.

  The Smiling Midget had wandered off down the driveway, somewhere out of sight. Rain began beating down on the metal rooftop of the shop, creating a mesmerizing melody, like a million tiny steel drums. Tight streams of water came next, curling off the roof and to the ground, scattering over the cement in random blobs. Before long they’d come together to form more puddles.

  The rain made Hector feel isolated and alone, which brought back the feelings of his jail cell. Those damn detectives had brought all his memories of Hymie right to the forefront of his mind, and he didn’t want to go there.

  He shoulda seen that whole thing coming. Curtis would’ve. He would’ve sniffed out Hymie’s desire to play the fool for that chinita bitch right out of the gate and moved to head it off at the pass. But never in a thousand years would Hector have figured his own cousin for a traitor. Now, that shit? That was serious. And it had to be dealt with.

  Still, Hymie was family. If only there’d been another way to deal with it.

  And now the detectives were onto something—what, he wasn’t sure—and the white cop in particular was going to be a problem . . . There was a look in his eyes when he’d said his partner’s name. Something determined. Something dangerous.

  Hector sighed. Too many people close to him were willing to betray him, plain and simple. His cousin. His girl. But why? What had he ever done wrong with Hymie to deserve that shit? Nothing. He was sure of it. He had spent nearly every minute of every day for over four months—in his cell, in the yard working out, in the kitchen cleaning an endless round of cafeteria dishes—trying to figure it out. All to no avail.

  Hector went inside to put on a hoodie and a jacket, then grabbed a pack of Nutter Butter that he’d seen on the office desk earlier. Knowing that Chico was busy over in Pico Rivera trying to speed up the sales of the stolen car parts over on Ingraham, Hector called Bennie to come pick him up.