The Parker Trilogy Page 21

  Hector had no sooner finished his call with Burro than he received another—this one from his boss, Ramon Tapia.

  “Hey,” Ramon said flatly.

  “Que paso, señor?”

  “Nada mucho. You out and okay?”

  “Yeah,” Hector said with a sigh as he took a seat in the office desk chair. Bennie had just texted and would be there in ten minutes.

  “Good. I heard you weren’t even out twenty-four hours before you had to take some corrective actions?”

  It was incredible how quickly word spread on the street. There was no use trying to keep a lid on it now. It was out. The important thing was to show that it had been dealt with.

  “Had an employee that needed a little talk with HR.”

  Ramon chuckled. “Same ol’ Hector. Good to have you back on the outside, lil’ homie.”

  “Good to be back.”

  “Okay. Well. We got work to discuss. Head over to Azteca in a half hour. We’ll grab a burrito.”

  “Got it.”

  Back on the street and back to work. Hector didn’t know why he expected anything different. Actually, he didn’t. He just didn’t expect to be doing it with this new . . . lonely . . . feeling inside. Drinking, a beating and a night with some random whore was not what he expected to be his opening gambit when he finally got back on the outside.

  He expected Marisol.

  “To hell with that bitch, man,” he said to himself, listening as the words caromed off the filing cabinets and walls. He didn’t need to think about her right now, so he turned his focus on the meeting.

  He expected commentary from The Smiling Midget but none came. He was inexplicably gone. At least for now.

  Hector would need to get up to snuff on the receipts for the past four months. Gang business on the streets was no different than the business being done only miles down the road in all those fancy high-rises in Downtown Los Angeles; the focus was the bottom line and who or what was getting in the way of that bottom line, plain and simple.

  The rain was moving down the office window, making the street and neighborhood outside look like a watery smear. Some guy with a plastic jacket and hood came riding by on a bike, his pant legs soaked. Who and where he could be going was a mystery, but the fact that he would be a mess by the time he got there was not.

  Ten minutes later, he texted Bennie, who was running a little late. He told him to hurry up, that he had a meeting to get to, and slid his phone onto the desk before he used the fingers of both his hands to rub eyes. He wasn’t excited about this meeting or about seeing Ramon. Usually, quality time with the boss was important stuff. But not this time. Hector just didn’t care.

  He sighed against the blues. He’d get through this. He would. He reminded himself that pain was part of growth, and then whispered a line from a Steinbeck book: “It is an aching kind of growing.”

  Yeah. That was it, exactly. He was aching. But he was growing.

  He saw Bennie pull up in his black Ford F-150, the windows bumping with the new Jay Rock song. After making his way out of the office, Hector locked the door behind him, jogged to the truck and got in.

  “Whafup, boff?” Bennie said with a big grin.

  Hector laughed. “Nothing.”

  They made their way through Boyle Heights, the rain around them, bouncing off the rooftops of parked cars or newspaper stands, darkening the tree trunks they passed and even somehow making the lawns of all the houses with dead grass look more alive.

  Hector dialed in Chico and put him on speaker so the three of them could run over the numbers. They’d already told Hector that business was good, but as it was broken down for him in detail, he realized it was actually really good. This made him happy. Going to Ramon with crap numbers was never pleasant.

  Before long they were at Azteca. Bennie parked.

  “You wait here, shouldn’t be too long. I’ll bring you a burrito. What kind you want?” Hector teased.

  Bennie didn’t miss a beat, even though his face was tinged with sadness. “Carne Afffada with red fauce.” Poor bastard was weeks away from chewing.

  Once inside, Hector saw Ramon in the corner booth. His usual escort was seated nearby, a three-man crew that each gave Hector a nod. Ramon stood, gave Hector the neighborhood handshake and a hug, then motioned for him to sit down. He had thick, black hair, gelled and combed straight back. His eyes were dark with one tear drop tattoo below his left eye. A mark of social proof from the old days, before people decided it best not to announce to law enforcement that you’d killed somebody. His skin tone was dark and he had a thick goatee.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  Hector gave him the rundown, in code. They’d long ago decided to discuss business in clothing terms, in case the conversation was recorded somehow. Sales of “dress jeans” being up fifteen percent was really heroin, and “collared shirts” was weed, and so on. Ramon nodded his approval with each piece of data, then he motioned for the waiter to come over and take their order.

  “This is all good news. We got a big meeting coming up with the Store Manager,” Ramon said. He was drinking a Dr Pepper through a straw.

  “Yeah?” This seemed unusual news to be getting, as Hector and the other “Department Managers” were rarely, if ever, invited to the bigger meetings.

  “Don’t let it go to your head, but I want you there.”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  Ramon looked grimly at the table for a second, then seemed to snap himself out of it. “I talked to Curtis this week. When you were on the inside, someone stabbed him with a shank.”

  Hector put his hands out. “What?”

  “Yeah. Got him in the kidney, but he’s gonna pull through. Anyway, when we talked he was pissed that you were in again. We both think you need to trade up.”

  Hector nodded, not wanting to show his surprise. “Really? S’cool.”

  “Don’t act all chill, fool. You got a way to go, but this is the first step. You’ll meet some of the other dudes that carry my rank, from Orange County, Long Beach and stuff. Most importantly, you’ll get to meet Guero.”

  Hector kept nodding and Ramon continued. “You play your cards right, you get noticed. You get noticed? You might be given a job or two. You do that well? You could get promoted.”

  “Okay. Got it.”

  “No, you don’t. Not yet.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  As a short old woman with a missing tooth and curly gray hair delivered their food, Ramon looked to his guards. “Outside. This is private.” At his command, the three of them got up and went outside, where they jockeyed under the awning over the front door for position out of the rain.

  “You and me. I want to check in with where we stand.”

  Hector was instantly nervous. “What are you—”

  Ramon looked Hector in the eye and said one word. “Hymie.”

  Hector wanted to look down at his plate, to pretend like he hadn’t just had a memory of his cousin jumping a fence behind a lumberyard to steal two-by-fours to fix the railing on their grandmother’s porch, but Hector couldn’t. Again, he thought of the world he was in, that he’d been in his whole life. It was not a world of people. It was a world of wolves. And no wolf ever looks away.

  “What about him,” Hector said, lowering his voice.

  “It’s one thing to know the score. Another to accept it. You went into the joint right after it happened, so we never had a chance to talk. Shit had to be done, you understand that, right?”

  Hector puffed up his chest. “Shit, yeah. I’m the one—”

  Ramon put his finger over his lips, then used the same hand to motion at the ceiling and walls, reminding Hector that you never knew who was listening. “Callate, hese.”

  “Right.”

  “We all know who had to put those shoes on lay away.”

  Hector nodded, both embarrassed that he had to be reminded to watch what he said and upset that his cousin had just been spoken of in code as a pair of shoes.


  “But are we good? Me and you. Do we both understand that the shoes were never . . . going to fit again?”

  “Yeah, boss. We’re solid. No question about it,” Hector said, jutting out his chin with pride. Then, even though he knew it was a lie to say it, he added, “He made his bed. No regrets.” But I should probably tell you that those detectives were around, asking questions. That this may not go away so easily. But ya know what? I won’t. Because it wasn’t right what you made me do and Hymie wasn’t no damned pair of shoes.

  “Good. That’s the end of it, then. Tomorrow night. 10 p.m. The Mayan.”

  “Got it.”

  When lunch ended, Ramon motioned for his guards to come back in and then, after he and Hector exchanged goodbyes, Ramon and his crew exited out the back door.

  When they left, Hector looked down at his plate.

  He’d barely eaten a bite.

  Not ten seconds later The Smiling Midget showed up, sitting where Ramon had been before. He was picking at his nose. Did you hear that, buddy boy? he said with a giggle. The Mayan. Man. What’re the odds, right?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Tic Toc wasn’t talking. He was sitting up in his hospital bed in the ER, crying police brutality and throwing f-bombs in all directions. Parker and Campos had waited outside while the doctors cleaned him up and packed his nose with cotton and Q-tips. One hand was cuffed to the side rail of the bed, leaving his other hand free to flip his middle finger at the two uniforms that were standing guard outside the curtain around his bed, each time they looked in on him.

  Captain Holland was walking up with a fresh cup of coffee in his hand. He had stopped in after visiting a homicide scene outside a nearby high school. Two freshman students, each a member of rival gangs, had a score to settle with one another. It started out as a simple fist fight, until one kid had landed a good enough shot to send the other one falling head first into a fire hydrant, cracking his skull and causing a massive brain hemorrhage. Just like that, a beef had turned into a murder, with one of them looking at a long stint in jail and the other one looking at nothing, ever again.

  “So. He ask yet?” Holland said, his tan face in stark contrast to his gray beard stubble, blue eyes and short white hair.

  “Nope,” Parker replied.

  “Doesn’t make sense,” Campos added.

  The cap shook his head. “No, it doesn’t.”

  They were all referring to the fact that Tic Toc had not asked for an attorney yet. By now, even without his face beat up and his cries of police wrongdoing, it was almost a given that he would’ve.

  “Okay,” the captain said calmly after he took a sip of his coffee, “let’s break it down. First off?”

  Campos put his hands in his pants pockets and rocked back on his heels. “He has a record. Two felonies.”

  “So, this one is big trouble for him.”

  “Yep.”

  “We came in right as the exchange was going down,” Parker interjected.

  The cap nodded. “And the nature of said exchange?”

  “Cash from the counter boys to him.”

  “That doesn’t get us far with the DA. They could claim it was money they owed him for a car or something.”

  Campos was chewing a piece of gum, which he was working hard on the left side of his mouth. “I know. But I already told him when he first got here, before the doctors chased me out, that with cause, we had searched his car, and right after that the counter boys sold him out.”

  “What’d we find?”

  “Half a kilo of cocaine and two hundred ecstasy pills.”

  The cap grunted. “Damn.”

  “Yep. With two priors?” Campos chuckled.

  “He’s toast. I think we got lucky, though,” Parker added.

  “How so?” Captain Holland inquired.

  Parker folded his arms. “We had him made to be heading out of town tonight, to Vegas. We’re guessing that he was trying to hit all his weekly stops early, to stock them up before he headed out.”

  “We don’t think this stuff was headed for Vegas?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “But either way, it really doesn’t matter. He ain’t going anywhere, now.”

  Before long the doctor handling Tic Toc, a thin woman with sharp features and wearing narrow glasses, came out, shook their hands and told them it was okay for them to go in and speak to their suspect. “He especially wants to see the detective who headbutted him,” she said with a disapproving smirk and one eyebrow cocked higher than the other.

  “Sure,” Captain Holland said. When she walked away he turned to Parker. “Headbutt?”

  “It’ll be in my report.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He’s very adept at martial arts, sir.”

  “And you’re not?” the captain asked.

  Campos was scratching his nose and looking uneasy.

  Parker kept it short. “He was in close, sir. I didn’t want him to grab my gun and it seemed like the quickest way to end things.”

  The captain studied him closely, a slight squint in his eyes. “Well. I’m glad to hear that it happened just as backup was pulling up and not after . . . because otherwise this whole thing could’ve been solved without this guy having a broken nose . . . right?”

  Parker looked at Campos, who was looking up at the ceiling like a Mexican cherub. On the drive over, he’d tried asking Parker if he was okay and what had happened at the end there, but Parker had blamed it all on a testosterone rush from the fight. Regardless, Campos had obviously talked to the uniforms and told them what to put in their report to keep Parker out of trouble: the truth. Just not the entire truth. Even so, the captain seemed to have sniffed out the ruse.

  Parker nodded.

  Moving quickly to change the subject, Campos asked, “Why do you think he wants to see you, Parker?”

  “Only one way to find out,” the cap said, taking another drink of his coffee. “Three of us going in there is a bit much. I’ll hang back. Try not to hit him again, Parker.”

  Campos and Parker walked in to see Tic Toc wiggling his fingers. When he looked up and saw Parker he said, “You. Son. Of. A. Bitch.”

  Parker sighed. “Again, with the mom comments.”

  “Screw you. You cheap-shotted me.”

  Parker wanted to tell him to be a man, accept that he’d gotten his ass kicked and to grow up, but that wouldn’t help anything. So instead he chuckled and said, “Maybe. But one thing that is for sure. You did not get lucky.”

  “Yeah. Well maybe I want to call—”

  Like a veteran, Campos cut him off before he could say the rest. “Listen, Tic Toc or whatever. It’s been a long day and I’ve still got even more work to do before I can go home and get a little somethin’ from the missus, if you know what I’m saying.”

  Tic Toc still looked irritated but said nothing.

  “You know what was in your car, and now so do we. Your two boys in the shop, Jared and Adrian? They’re already in jail and have both given statements against you.”

  “Yeah? So what, they could just be covering for their own asses and you—”

  Campos put up a hand to silence him, then surprised Parker by going in for the kill so early. “Then there’s Alice, your girlfriend. We’ve got her statement too.”

  The irritation in Tic Toc’s face disappeared in a flash, replaced now with the slack-jawed look of shock.

  “I’m sure she loves you . . . lots,” Campos said, playing to his emotions, “but you can’t expect her to go down for your murder rap.”

  Parker was impressed. In just a few minutes Campos pretzeled Tic Toc’s mind so badly that his punk ass was knocked speechless.

  It took awhile for Tic Toc to get the words out, but when he did they came with genuine dismay. “Murder rap?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Oh, no. Bullshit. Who you saying I murdered? Ya know what, forget it, I want my—”

  This time Parker cut him off bef
ore he could say the magic word. “Eric Yi.”

  “What? Are you kidding me? There’s—”

  “Found him under the Fourth Street Bridge. Shot up like a goose.”

  “Ah, hell no! I had nothin’ to do with that.”

  “Then who did?”

  Tic Toc was quiet, but his eyes, as they darted back and forth, were telegraphing the thoughts that were ricocheting through his head. “You guys . . . this is jacked up, man. I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Well. Someone did.”

  “Yeah. But not me.”

  Parker went next. “Then . . . who? This is where you can quit dicking around and really help yourself, Danny.”

  “Look . . .” was all he managed. Then, as if by force of habit, he shrugged, even though it was completely out of place.

  It was now that Campos switched gears and went buddy-buddy, softening his voice in the process. “Like it or not, and I’m guessing you really don’t like it, I understand, but still, like it or not? We’re all you have now, man.”

  “How’s that?” Tic Toc replied, shooting a bitter look at Parker.

  “We’re on this for the murder. That’s what we really want. You help us out, we can work with the DA on the whole drugs thing.”

  Tic Toc went for the wiggle room. “I don’t know how those got in my car.”

  Again, Campos surprised. Not only using Tic Toc’s real name, to personalize the conversation, but also the magic word to boot. “C’mon, Danny. We got a body in the morgue, shot to shit, with the mother, grandmother and sister of the deceased losing their damned minds over it. My phone rings practically every half hour from one of them, flipping out, wanting answers. You want us to call you a lawyer?”

  The room froze. Tic Toc blinked.

  Campos stuck out his chin and continued. “Fine. Here’s what we’ll tell him or her: we’ve got statements from three people that put you at the auto shop with bad intent. Felony possession, possession with intent to sell . . . You’re already at ten to fifteen years, minimum. Oh, and did we mention that the shop is within a thousand feet of a school? Yep. Acacia Street Elementary. So, there’s another three to four years to the charges. And these would be the numbers we’d be talking if this was your first offense, which we all know it isn’t.”