The Parker Trilogy Read online

  “But . . .”

  “Your fingerprints are going to be all over the coke bundle too, as well as the baggie of X, and we all know it.”

  Tic Toc almost looked pitiful, his eyes like two marbles over his grossly swollen nose.

  Ironically it was the guy who’d caused his misery, Parker, who moved to put him out of it. “Give us the name, Danny. Whoever it was won’t be able to do shit to help you—and worse, if you play the honor card and go inside with that kind of secret? You may be the next body we hear about. Instead, you help us on this, you could save yourself a ton of years in a much safer place.”

  Tic Toc blinked and sniffed against the cotton in his nose.

  “Our captain’s just outside. He’s your key with the DA,” Campos said. “You want us to call him in?”

  Danny Noh looked down at his hands, which were open and resting palms up in his lap, as if they somehow held a way out of this situation that he just couldn’t grip at.

  Then, after a minute or so of silence, he nodded his head in defeat.

  It got dark early this time of year, but the storm looming overhead like a black ocean had only exacerbated the effect. As he made his way down the front steps of the church, he saw Carol’s brown Chevy SUV turn out of the parking lot and pull up to meet him. Getting in, he thanked her again for the ride.

  “Father, please. It’s no bother. I can tell it’s important.”

  “Yes. Thank you for not prying.”

  “I understand.”

  “If you want to go home after you drop me off, that’s fine.”

  She shook her head. “Absolutely not. I’ll go back and make sure to lock everything up properly.”

  The rain had abated and was mostly sprinkles now. He took a deep breath. He managed to reach Luisa on her cell phone, just as she was leaving school after band practice. She was scared, telling him that she had been ignoring Felix’s phone calls all day and now he was parked out in front of the school’s main entrance. To help her out, one of her girlfriends was going to give her a ride home. Luisa agreed to meet Father Soltera at her apartment.

  The drive there with Carol was much quicker than his walk had been the day before. They pulled up in front of the building just as a late model white Pontiac did. Out jumped Luisa, her black hair tied in a ponytail, her puffy jacket zipped to the neck over faded blue jeans and dark blue tennis shoes.

  A small “tsk” escaped Carol’s lips when she saw Luisa, but she went no further. Carol could only guess at what Luisa was facing, and it could be any number of things, but that Father Soltera had been so desperate to reach her meant that whatever it was, it was serious.

  “Thanks again, Carol.”

  “No problem, Father. I hope she’s okay. And don’t worry. I will be discreet. And I will pray for her.”

  He nodded, got out of the SUV and watched Carol drive away before he turned and gave a wave to Luisa. She waved back, but she looked shaken, causing concern to well in his chest.

  “Hi, Father,” she said in a voice smaller than usual.

  “Hello, Luisa. Are you okay?”

  As her friend drove off, Luisa looked at him with a face so full of worry that it broke Father Soltera’s heart. She was too young to be so worried. Tears welled in her eyes as she said, “Why, Father? Why can’t he just be happy for us?”

  “I’m sorry, child. Please don’t cry. Let’s get inside, out of this cold, and you can tell me all about it.”

  She nodded as he put his arm around her and walked her to her apartment.

  Once inside, she made them each a cup of tea, staying mostly quiet. But once she sat down on the couch with him, she let it all out. “He’s scaring me, Father. He’s saying that I have to get an abortion, that it’s not my choice.” She rubbed her free hand over her eyes, as if she could push in all the tears that were trickling out.

  “That’s not true, you know.”

  Nodding, she looked first to the ceiling and then back to him. “But it’s even worse than that,” she squeaked.

  He nodded grimly. “Why?”

  “He’s saying things that are just . . . tearing . . . me . . . apart.” And now the tears came with sobs, and the sobs with the terrified look of a trapped animal, locked there in her face that still held some baby fat.

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “Tell me. I’m here and so is the Lord.”

  She brought both her legs up on the couch and sat crisscross, facing him, her tea cup in one hand as she wiped at her tears and combed a stray hair behind her ear with the other. “He’s telling me that he’ll never love the baby.” Her voice tightened again. “That he’ll never love me. That it’ll be a b-b-bastard baby.”

  He took the tea cup out of her hand and put it on the coffee table as she fell into his arms.

  “It’s okay, Luisa. Let it all out.”

  As she wept, Felix’s face came to his mind, and Father Soltera had to quell the anger that was growing inside him. Nothing good could come of it. Still, it was hard to see the innocent hurt by those who were so evil. He reminded himself not to judge. That it was not his place. Then he focused himself on the true role that he felt the Lord meant for him here.

  Before she spoke again, she took a very deep breath. “My mom’s going to tell my uncle.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. She’s desperate, Father, and scared. She knows better. My uncle’s an animal. He’s involved in very bad things, and she’s a woman of God, Father.”

  “I know, child. She is indeed.”

  “I’ve brought all this trouble to our house. And disgrace.”

  “You can’t dwell on these things, Luisa.”

  “How can I not, Father? If she turns to him . . . he will do something. Something horrible. And I get to live with that, for the rest of my life. And what he does to Felix will be bad enough, but it’ll be even worse than that . . .”

  She sat back, catching her breath between more sobs before she regained her composure and used a nearby throw pillow to dry her face.

  “Worse? How? What do you mean?”

  “You know, Father. If my mother asks for his help? It could end up being the worst sin of her life. What . . . what if it costs my mother . . . her soul, Father? What then? How do I live the rest of my life, with or without my baby, knowing that it was me who caused that?”

  “You mustn’t dwell on things this way, Luisa. You can’t focus on everyone or everything.”

  “Then what? What do I focus on?”

  He grabbed both of her hands in his own and squeezed. “Isn’t it obvious, child? The baby. The baby is what you have to focus on now, the precious gift of life, growing in you even as we speak.”

  “But my mom?”

  “I will do all I can to talk her out of the things she’s contemplating. But know this: she is your mother, Luisa. She will do anything to protect you. As you must do to protect your own child, now.”

  Her eyes were big as fear and wonder in them took turns glancing around the room. “What do I do, Father?”

  How many times in his life had he been presented with this exact same question? He was momentarily overwhelmed, and stifled a sob of his own. This child, she was not going to fall to the enemy. God give him strength, he would die before he would let it happen. Telling her to bow her head, he spoke the Unfailing Prayer of St. Anthony over her.

  Then, he told her his idea, of how he thought it could help her, the baby and her mother. About how it could protect her from Felix and remove the need of threats or poor decisions by everyone involved.

  She thought long and hard about it, and when her cell phone rang, back to back with a half-dozen more calls from Felix, she finally agreed.

  Without hesitating, Father Soltera called Eden Hill Women’s Shelter, a place where he’d brought many other women, and told them he’d be there soon with a young girl in great need.

  Then, amazingly getting a laugh out of Luisa as he did so, he got them an Uber.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

>   Hector sat on the rooftop of the body shop alone, wearing his thick Dodgers jacket over a hooded sweatshirt, which helped cover his head. The air was crisp and brutally cold as the back end of the storm pushed through the city, and in patches of clear sky that were like windows overhead, he managed an occasional glimpse of the half moon.

  The Smiling Midget was gone again, this time chased away by the copy of Fahrenheit 451 that Hector had pulled from his box of books and brought up to the rooftop to read beneath the light of a tiny flashlight, which he gripped between his teeth.

  It felt different to read in freedom. In jail, you took whichever book you could get your hands on. Sometimes this worked, like when he’d gotten a copy of Don Quixote, but other times, with the library depleted, he was stuck with whatever book was left over. To this day, he didn’t know how a copy of Jane Eyre had been allowed into the inventory, but it had been the longest four hundred pages in his life.

  Looking down to the streets below, he wondered at all the lit windows of the houses, surrounded by metal gates and fences, and apartments, stacked on top of one another in broken patterns like a lighted crossword puzzle. The people inside, living their romances and tragedies, like characters in a book. The neighborhood dwarfed and muted beneath the blaring lights of all the downtown skyscrapers, towering in the distance.

  From his perch, he could see a pair of white Converse tennis shoes dangling from a power line a few blocks away, where Vatos territory ended and Evergreen territory began. Some days it made him proud to be in a gang, but other times it felt foolish.

  What were they all really doing with their lives, this vato or that vato, in this gang or that gang, each dragging out their days, making little baby-gangsters with one hood rat or another, perpetuating the miseries that had enveloped this neighborhood since the 1950s, when being gangster meant dressing sharp, going to Grand Central Market for lunch and settling most disputes like men: with your fists.

  Hector and Curtis used to talk about those days all the time, trading stories handed down to them by various OGs in the hood, who were grandfathers and great grandfathers by now.

  They all said the same thing: these days, it was too easy to kill. Guns made banging too simple for the pollos to sneak in, guys who would never have the balls to throw blows one-on-one, who now acted tough because they could shoot you while they were driving by in a car. Back in the day, the old gangsters claimed, there was honor. There was respect.

  Hector wasn’t so sure. He wondered how many OGs sat on their rooftops all those years ago wishing for a better life just like he was now. He was willing to bet it was more than a few.

  It wasn’t a perfect world, but it was as good as any of them had. They didn’t want no sympathy visits from the churches or college students trying to understand the “plight” of their “existence,” as if they were some damn zoo animals who couldn’t think for themselves. That was exactly not what the problem was. They could think for themselves just fine, and they didn’t have to be math majors to figure out the odds of getting out of here.

  You learned early that when the family income was Dad’s on-again, off-again jobs and Mom’s visits to the welfare office, you weren’t likely to go anywhere in life. It may have been an excuse, but some excuses were only called that by people fortunate enough not to have to make them.

  He put the book down on an A/C duct nearby, turned off the flashlight and let the dark of night surround him. Then he had thoughts of Hymie again, except this time Hector didn’t let the guilt permeate him. Instead, he let the thoughts run wild for once.

  They instantly brought him the memory of the LA County Fair, when he and Hymie were kids, maybe eleven or so, with their orange Popsicle sticks, running from booth to booth, trying to budget their play money appropriately because they both knew full well that once the money was spent they would be getting no more, and nothing sucked more than being broke by noon at a fair your family was determined to stay at until way past dinner time.

  Hymie was running ahead of him, in a white t-shirt and blue shorts, the bottoms of his tennis shoes flashing in an alternating rhythm, his hair cut in a tight crew, his left hand full of Skee-Ball tickets, the orange Popsicle in his right. Occasionally, he would glance over his shoulder at Hector and laugh, blissfully unaware that only twelve years later the cousin running behind him would be the one who would order him killed.

  Hector had been blissfully unaware of it too, hadn’t he? Yes.

  So, he had chased Hymie and laughed right along with him, the sticky syrup of his own Popsicle melting between Hector’s fingers. It was a fun day. His mom was happy and had promised to buy him a wooden sword from the Knights of the Round Table booth on their way out later, and his most recent stepdad, some biker guy, wasn’t anywhere near as big a tool as the rest of them had been.

  The air was alive with the sounds of bleating goats and snorting pigs from the petting zoo nearby, mingling with the clanging bells from the Strong Man booth and the Water Gun Race stand, with its tight streams of water inflating the balloons at the top until they popped.

  Standing on the rooftop now, Hector could still hear the echoes of the booming voice from Water Gun Race guy. “Win once, get a prize! Win twice, get a stuffed animal! Win three times? The world is yours!!!”

  Watching the red and white lights of the traffic as it sped by on the 110 Freeway, Hector realized that it was easy to promise the world when you knew there was no chance of ever getting it. Nobody ever won any of those fair or carnival games three times. Like. Ever. Twice was lucky enough, and almost as rare. The smart eye could see it in the faded colors of those stuffed animals, stuck there at the top of the display rack after too many days in the sun, un-won.

  Suckers.

  But at eleven, even being a sucker was fun. So, they played. Then they ate and took note of the girls their age, the pretty güeritas with their long blond hair and blue eyes, like strange beasts from another land, unlike any of the girls in their neighborhood.

  The horn of a semi-truck from the trucking company down the street blasted, startling Hector. Someone back from a route needing to have the yard gate unlocked so they could get in and clock out after another grinding day. That was what growing up was all about: grinding. Grinding days. Grinding nights. Until you got ground down to nothing.

  Hector shook his head in frustration. He was up for a promotion. He was supposed to be happy. And not too long ago, even as recently as four months ago, right before he went in the joint, he would’ve been.

  But that was before he had time to sift through the shattered reality of what he’d done. Before he lied to his aunt about Hymie’s demise, at his own funeral no less. Back then a part of him had stayed hard because it had to, but it wasn’t hard anymore. Now? It was going soft and full of memories.

  That night at the County Fair, when they were leaving, he’d reminded his mother about the Knights of the Round Table sword she promised to get him. But it was too late. The grown-ups had spent all their money in the beer garden, getting drunk while they scarfed down giant turkey legs and bacon-wrapped corn dogs. At the time, he had hidden his bitter disappointment from them all and played it off like it didn’t matter, but Hymie had known better. He’d punched Hector in the arm when they were walking behind the rest of the group and tried to comfort him.

  “Don’t worry, homie,” Hymie said with that crazy big grin of his. “You’ll get it next time.”

  Hector had nodded, but way deep down, he knew better. He’d read that book, or at least the children’s version of it. King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table. It was a great book.

  But Hector knew he would never be a Lancelot or a King Arthur.

  He knew it even way back then.

  Back at the station house, Campos was sitting with his feet up on his desk and his arms crossed. Parker had pulled up his own desk chair and spun it backwards so that he could sit on it with his arms folded on the back rest. Night had fallen, it was getting late and, despite being ti
red, they were ruminating.

  “So. If we believe our boy Tic Toc, he’s not the one who aced Hymie that night at the liquor store,” Campos said as his phone vibrated with a notification. He glanced at the message and smirked.

  Parker scratched an itch on his forehead. “Right. He’s saying it was Jin.”

  “But Yi told us, when we interviewed him, that he was with Jin at the nightclub, when Jin threw him under the bus for the drug bust.”

  “So? Maybe Jin goes and aces Hymie after he bails out of the nightclub.”

  Campos’ face went sour, like he’d just bitten into a lemon. “Did he have time?”

  Parker reached over and grabbed the file for the drug bust off his desk to confirm what he already knew. “The vice squad report says the bust went down at 10:20 p.m. that night.”

  “What’s the name of the club?” Campos asked as he sat up and tapped the keys on his computer. The monitor, which was sleeping, blinked on.

  “Grand Central Station. Over on Normandie.”

  Parker watched as Campos searched the addresses for both Grand Central Station and Sunny’s Liquor Store, then let Google Maps do the rest.

  Campos squinted at the screen. “It’s a fifteen-minute drive.” Then, for no apparent reason, he pulled the screen image sideways and zoomed in on Valley Village before he shut the window.

  “Okay. The shooting took place around midnight.”

  “Normally, a setup like that, you’d have your shooters waiting and ready to go, not flying fifteen minutes across town to do the job.”

  “Yeah . . . but, I mean, this is a tiny-ass gang, right?”

  “Yep. You’ve got a point.” Campos sighed. “Gotta love multitasking gangsters.”

  “So, maybe Jin was always meant to pass the drugs to Yi at a certain time, let’s say, for the sake of argument, 11:00 p.m. Then, he drives over to Sunny’s Liquor Store and meets with whoever that second shooter was.”