The Parker Trilogy Read online

  When Burro showed up just after 10:00 p.m. Hector saw him first, and then immediately distracted Bennie and Chico. He’d planned for this moment. On his cell phone, he’d downloaded a Kate Upton dance video to show them, hard core enough to mentally break a sober man, much less one on his third beer after three tequila shots.

  They were lit. The music fired off and the crowd went nuts, the floor full now and the balcony heading that way. Burro walked right past David Fonseca, who he’d followed for over a day now, under Hector’s orders, so that there’d be no “mistaken identity” mistakes when it happened. Right man. Right time. Burro moved into the center of the crowd, then disappeared like a phantom.

  Meanwhile, David kept a few guys from blocking the pickup station at the bar, double-checked a few wrist tags the bartender called him over for, and mainly kept a watchful eye over everyone between himself and the stage.

  Twenty minutes later Ramon came rolling in with his crew, and another dozen homeboys. Probably the Long Beach or OC fools. In the center of their group there was a tall man of stocky build wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt and red tie. On his head, he wore a black fedora, tilted to one side. Even from this distance Hector cold see that his eyes were narrow and dark. He wore a pinky ring on each hand and was chewing on a toothpick.

  They were all shuttled by a staff member upstairs to the VIP areas, with full bottle service underway, just as Hector had suspected.

  “Is that him?” Bennie asked.

  “Ya think, dummy?” Chico said.

  “Fhut up, man. Is that him?” Bennie asked again, this time looking at Hector.

  Having never met the famous Guero Martinez, Hector wasn’t sure. But the way the man carried himself, like his swag knew no ends, made it safe odds that it was. Hector merely nodded.

  Bennie shook his head. “Man. Dude looks like some wanna be Frank Finatra.”

  Dropping his chin to his chest, Chico shook his head. “You killin’ me, dog.”

  Hector had to laugh.

  But his laughter was cut brutally short when in walked Marisol, in a barely-there red dress and high heels, every curve of her body on luscious display, her hair cut and styled, her eyeshadow dark and mesmerizing. Hector’s shock was stronger than any shot of liquor ever could be. He felt his breath jam in his throat and his insides go weak.

  She was with two friends, Sandra and Lety, who Hector knew well. Her friends being in on all of this made it feel like a triple betrayal now. Hadn’t he helped Lety with her car payments? Yes. He had. And what about Sandra, with that white dude from work who wouldn’t take no for an answer? Who’d helped her with that situation? Hector had.

  His rage rose, like a giant wave.

  Cresting. Cresting.

  Until he watched in horror as Marisol crossed the room with a big, happy smile and gave David Fonseca a deep, warm kiss.

  Then? It came crashing down, roaring with a deafening boom.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Parker flashed his badge at the doorman and entered The Mayan at 10:30 p.m. sharp with Campos at his side. Murillo and Klink pulled up the rear with four uniforms, immediately shuttling the manager to the side of the room and telling her to freeze the door, which she did.

  No one was to move. Not the doormen, the bouncers or vendors. Davenport’s unit had taken up positions out front and in the alley out back. If all went well, this would be a simple snatch and go. Mondo would tell Jin to chill, that he’d call an attorney, and the rest of the thugs would come to the brilliant conclusion that a shootout in the middle of a damn nightclub was way too Al Capone and, more importantly, was guaranteed to cause damage to business with all the public backlash that would follow.

  Once inside the theater area, Parker was first struck by the cascade of colors: oranges, reds, yellows, blues and purples that bathed the walls and ceiling. He didn’t know if it was the music, the strobe lights or the dancing bodies moving in wild, oscillating circles, but he suddenly felt the need for some Dramamine. His stomach dipped and churned. The song being played had exploding beats that were combining with the flashing orange lights.

  Like ordinance, exploding all around, beneath that hateful, desert sun.

  Shit! Stop it.

  The floor beneath his feet was sticky from spilled drinks as his eyes adjusted to all the lights. He moved from his position just inside the entrance to allow the crowd that was trickling in behind him to go by, and then surveyed his surroundings.

  There had to be over five hundred people here already, and climbing. The room was put together like many clubs: haphazardly but chic. Dark red drapes, a half hue shy of maroon, hung from the walls in tight curves and plunging strips, looking ominously like fountains of dried blood. The giant dance floor ahead of him was ringed with standing cocktail tables, a massive bar immediately off to his right with people queued up in three different lines to get the poison of their choice. Groups of people were also up against the walls, dancing in place or chatting away. Anywhere you looked there was the spooky, rectangular glow of cell phone screens as people texted or took selfies.

  The strobe lights overhead were placed in a loose star pattern, beneath a sculpture of a sun with an eye in the middle or something, the lights strapped tightly to the rafters with cables. Near each one was a colored spotlight, red, blue or purple, that sent crisscrossing lines of light down to the crowd below, piercing the lingering dry ice fog.

  He was in love with an Irish girl from Boston, but he wasn’t blind. The crowd was almost all college kids, and the skirts and tops on the girls were barely existent, wrapped tightly around bodies that were somehow balancing on insanely high heels. It was as if the dress tonight was borderline Victoria’s Secret, and Parker was no prude, not by a long shot, but he was glad he was older now.

  There was a time he would’ve found such a place to be fun, but not anymore. Not after the things he saw over four months ago. The gray angel in the driveway of Victoria Brasco’s house for instance, or the one with the dead man on the freeway that had looked right at Parker when he’d driven by. He hadn’t seen anything like them since, but that didn’t matter; they’d given him a new perspective on life. Or at least a hint of it.

  He now saw what was around him with a sort of clarity: it was a place full of people having fun, yes. Some of them. But not all. It was also a place full of loneliness and people looking for a distraction . . . something, anything, a song, a touch, to take their minds off their pain and off their wandering. And yeah, it might’ve been a cliché observation, but all the young men here looked on edge, on the prowl, as if all the dripping potential of sex around them could drive them a little mad. Or worse.

  Be it a broken rubber that would lead to a scramble for the morning-after pill tomorrow, or that very first shot of heroin that would only lead to a thousand more, the damage was coming. Few would be spared. Even the ones who made it “safely” home alone would only feel more alone than ever. Be it the booze or the X, it all wore off eventually. The long and the short of it was for many here tonight this was a place full of pending bruises that might never heal.

  He scanned the crowd to the left, his area to cover. Campos had the right. It was going to be hard to make out facial features in any great detail until you got up real close on someone, which only made this whole exercise more dangerous. But they’d all seen the entourage of black Escalades pull up right outside the entrance to The Mayan only a half hour ago, the occupants whisked inside at a frantic pace.

  Fisher, from the Gang Unit, had been in the parking lot at the corner, hidden in the back of a delivery van that was positioned to offer a perfect view of the entrance of the club. With a pair of high-powered binoculars, he’d been able to ID Ramon Tapia, the leader of the East Los Vatos, and Roberto Laria, a known heavy for Black Fence, a Long Beach gang known to have serious ties with Guero Martinez. A small group of Asian suits had also entered the club, one of whom was treated by the rest with some deference. Though Fisher couldn’t ID his face, his build
, squat and stocky, with almost a non-existent neck between his head and shoulders, matched that of Mondo Rhee, the head of the Asian Soldiers. That was enough to assume that mixed in with the rest of the crowd would be their man, Jin Yeung.

  On Parker’s phone was Jin’s most recent photo, taken three days ago and lifted off Amy Kim’s Facebook Page earlier that afternoon. Parker was good with faces. He’d know him now if he caught sight of him. He also had a downloaded pic of Guero Martinez, whose file had floated to the surface of this case as a sort of “next up” notion in Parker’s head, off the record at least.

  Because something was way off with Guero Martinez. Not with this setup; a known club with a traditional DJ, but with those private parties he was rumored to put on once a month, usually in abandoned buildings off Alameda Avenue, west of Chinatown. Multiple reports now had the clubs almost drowning in drugs, and they also came with some troubling rumors, about girls disappearing, either for Guero’s sadistic pleasures or to be sold off overseas.

  Parker moved cautiously through the crowd, knowing full well that he was one of the oldest people here, as the music continued to thump in blasting pulses of what sounded like organ notes and electric guitars, with the occasional wail of canned sirens thrown in for good measure. The only lyrics were a woman’s voice on a timed loop that kept saying “Look in yourself and see the sky.” Whatever the hell that meant.

  As Parker moved forwards into the outer ring of the crowd, he looked into a few faces and saw that many people were already so high on something that they wouldn’t know the sky from the sun at this point.

  He pushed on, sidling his way between bodies, noticing that most of the guys were in slacks or dress jeans and either tight dress shirts or t-shirts with torn necklines. Pure Abercrombie & Fitch. There was no moving smoothly into the crowd; it was a living thing, pushing on you and pulling at you. A few girls turned their heads to look at him, but his ego boost was short-lived; the look on their faces was less a flirty “come-hither” and more nervous relief of a passing shock, as if maybe they thought their dad or older brother had shown up for a second. Parker sighed. He was going to go with older brother, or maybe even uncle, because dad just simply hurt too much.

  The music kept pounding and now his head joined in. Great. A headache was all he needed. Maybe it could bump and grind with his nausea, like all the bodies around him. He took a breather at a vacant cocktail table, wanting to get his bearings for a minute. The SWAT team was waiting for his signal, and he quietly tapped the clear earpiece of the radio transmitter. “I’m in.”

  He then had to say “repeat that” three times to make out Davenport’s reply: “Do you see him?” They all knew the transmitter and audio communication inside a nightclub pounding music at airplane decibel levels was a long shot. In case the transmitter proved insufficient, he still had his cell phone.

  A waitress with black hair stepped towards him with a platter full of test tubes loaded with some peach colored concoction that no doubt consisted of alcohol. Parker waved her off and yelled, “I’m waiting for somebody.” The waitress nodded and moved on.

  A group of five men, boys really, most likely just over drinking age, cloistered near him and began discussing the night before them. One of them was tired after work but determined to “turn up” tonight. Another had observed that an Arabic princess in the center of the dance floor was “on fleek.” And so on, a new vernacular, sure, but pretty much the usual commentary of men that centered on the bravado of the hunt for tail. It made Parker wish he’d gotten one of those test tube drinks after all. Not to hunt, but to celebrate the fact that his hunting days were over.

  The music dropped from its fever pitch and suddenly ebbed into an eerie lullaby. Parker left the table and made his way closer to the stage, where he turned to the side and looked up into the balcony as inconspicuously as possible. They were there, like a mixed pack of wild dogs.

  Parker spoke into his mic. “I’ve got confirmation on Mondo, Ramon, Guero and one of his bodyguards.”

  “Which one?” Campos chirped in.

  “Bald one with the face tattoo, I think his name is—”

  “Felix. Felix Caldorone,” Campos replied. “I see him. Watch his ass. He’s the one with a rap sheet that stretches to the floor, remember?”

  “Yeah,” Parker said, mad at himself for drawing a blank with such an obvious mark. But his head was hurting. From the music, yeah, but from still trying to fight off the blues.

  You shouldn’t be here in your condition, and you know it.

  “Shut up,” he whispered to himself, too quietly for the mic to pick up.

  You’re not sharp. You could get someone killed.

  Parker squinted and looked around again. Multicolored e-cig lights made slow, lazy eights in the darkness as their owners swayed their heads and moved in place, the lullaby seeming to calm the crowd’s vibe and give them a breather. The strong odor of weed began wafting Parker’s way, making his stomach do another tuck and roll as he searched the privacy booths further away, one at a time.

  When he saw Jin, leaning back with a drink, his feet kicked up on a table in one of the private booths of the balcony, an Asian girl next to him, no doubt Mondo’s sister, Parker felt the room almost freeze in place. Finally. There was no mistaking him. He was apparently in a good mood, laughing and yucking it up, dressed in a white dress shirt and black dress pants.

  Parker did his count: seven men were around Guero and Ramon. One of them was holding a bottle of tequila, pouring it out to the rest as they partied on. There was no doubt they were armed. But Parker’s main concern right now was with the number of people that had gathered in the balcony who might be caught in a cross fire. Furthermore, now standing at the foot of the booth, hands folded in front of him in a classic secret service pose, was Felix, looking mad about something.

  “I got a visual on Jin. Back left corner, near the exit door. You see him, Campos?”

  “Yep.”

  “What else?” Davenport squawked.

  “He’s off to the side with a girl. The rest of the group is to his left with Ramon, Guero and Mondo, who all make up a group of nine. All men so far.”

  “Repeat that,” Davenport barked.

  Parker covered his mouth and repeated himself.

  “Got it. Now what?”

  “There’s a lot of people in here, guys.”

  “Yeah?” Davenport said in an “I told you so” sort of way.

  Campos replied, tension in his voice. “The cards you’re dealt, man.”

  Parker bit on the inside of his cheek. Nerves. This was his first live case in a long time.

  “You’re gonna wanna come in the back and make a hard left up the staircase. That will lead to the balcony. Once there, make a hard right and you’ll be right on top of him. Just look for the only dude up there, first row from the railing, sitting with his arm around a girl in a white dress.”

  “The Asian pretty boy with greased-back hair,” Campos added.

  “Well, we can situate a team at the front and bring—”

  “Hold on,” Parker interrupted him, noticing that the waitress with the test tubes was coming back towards him. “I got a civilian coming up on me.”

  “K.”

  The music began to pick up again. Break time was over. Girls shouted and raised their hands and the boys followed suit, an eruption of bumping electronica spilling from countless speakers. Out of nowhere, to Parker’s stunned amazement, a clown dressed in a classic kid’s party outfit came walking through the crowd on stilts, towering over the dancers, tossing handfuls of Smarties candies out over their heads. But he wasn’t a happy clown; his smile was painted upside down and he was wearing black eye contacts, making his eyes look like bulging globes of darkness, and his teeth were plastic fangs, as if Halloween had come to join the night months too early.

  Parker had totally forgotten about the waitress until he heard her shout, “Hey!”

  He looked at her and then waved her off agai
n, but something wasn’t right. She looked nervous, her movements almost tentative as she motioned for him to lean closer, evidently so she could say something into his ear. He leaned in, careful to give her the ear absent the transmitter.

  “Hi,” she said nervously, her black hair falling into his face like a shroud.

  “What’s up? I really don’t—” but he got no further than that before she cut him off.

  “Mr. Martinez says to say hi,” she said, a tone of worry in her voice, either for herself for fear of getting the message wrong, or for Parker for not getting the message at all.

  Parker froze in surprise. The room seemed to go darker, and for a split second he couldn’t hear any music at all.

  When he looked up to the private booth he saw that Guero Martinez was staring right at him.

  Seeing that he’d gotten the clue, the waitress swiftly disappeared.

  “Davenport?” Parker said grimly, his gaze still locked with Guero’s.

  “Yeah?”

  “I think we have a problem.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Father Soltera’s mind was moving faster than the metro train.

  He could not stop thinking about Napoleon Villa’s words: beware of the moments when you would seek to deny your humanity. It’s in such thoughts that you’ll find the enemy does his best work.

  The thing was, being holy could not protect him from being human.

  He sighed softly and listened to the clanging rails of the metro, watching the city passing by in nighttime watercolors, smeared and pressed thin by the velocity of the train.

  Had that not been him too, once? Pressed and spread thin? A lifetime given to the church and to his Lord, with so many in need and so few willing to do what it took to overcome that need. Mothers burying sons gunned down on streets that did not know their names, husbands lost in the bottom of bottles filled with equal parts alcohol and apathy. There was lost jobs and poverty and winning lottery tickets for modest sums, there was infidelity and cruelty, lies and truths, hopes and realities, scattered like runes over a neighborhood always teetering on the edge of extinction.