The Parker Trilogy Page 30

  There were those that married, like Robert and Laura, a future ahead of them made up of births and anniversaries, joys and heartaches, and those that would spend most of their days single, for reasons known and unknown. Those that found love, and those that didn’t. Each person on their own long walk, some wearier than others, most spent and too weak to go on by the end.

  How many last rites had he issued across the years, over someone gasping in rattled gobs of desperation, mouths that had been opening for communion every Sunday for decades, now agape at the relentless encroachment of death? Some died and were buried grandly, yes, but many others were like Eleanor Rigby. You tossed the soil over them with a heavy hand knowing that at least two people had come: you and the Holy Spirit.

  Slowly, ever so quietly, life had lost its hope for him, and even in the company of God, he found hardship. No less had been promised by Christ. And for a very long time that had been enough, knowing that his savior had endured all that he had, and persevered. Life, hopeful or otherwise, was not about this life, but about the next. It was about taking your last gasp with an inward measure of rejoice, not despair. It was about being faithful to something, anything, somewhere, that was greater than yourself.

  And this idea had worked for a time, like a good watch that had suddenly come to a stop the very first time his eyes met hers, when time utterly froze. It was devastating to see eternity, at last, in that way. Not in the afterlife, but in the expanse of that shared gaze with another human being that just wanted to find love, plant it and see it take root in this life. A person, himself, and another person, her. And there was no doubt, not in a trillion years, that Gabriella had felt it too.

  She was taboo. He was taboo. But love wasn’t always a gentle soldier, come to save. Sometimes he was a warrior, sent to capture. To this day, no matter how many Percocets he took to forget, no matter how many times he prayed for it not to be so, no matter how many times he asked his Father in heaven to take away the thought, he couldn’t shake the pervading belief that nothing felt so wonderfully pure and joyous as what he felt at the mere sound of her laugh could ever be anything evil.

  He knew this did not reconcile with his vows. At all. And that had been the conundrum, this inner torture, not of love for two different women, like some men suffered, but of his deep and devoted love to his God and his growing, overwhelming love for her. The two simply could not coexist. It was an adultery of blasphemous proportions.

  Until the Goodbye Day came.

  It was a summer day. July 2nd. Just past one in the afternoon. She had come by church on her lunch hour for yet another awkward dance of nervous talk and locked eyes full of confusion, the air around them a bubble of disbelief at what they felt in the face of what they were not allowed to feel. Her hair had been pulled back, making her tan cheekbones stand out more for some reason. He never knew or studied the ways of women, but he did notice how little makeup she always wore.

  She’d come to tell him that she’d made a decision to go to a different church, wiping tears away from her dark eyes, which looked away from him nervously. This was it, this moment. He knew it. The moment when most men had to make a stand and claim the heart, the precious gift, of the woman they loved. She wanted it. He wanted it.

  But he was not most men, was he?

  And what she saw as a final opportunity, he saw as a final call to sacrifice. This day, this hour, would be his cross to bear, until the day that one of his brothers of the cloth sprinkled the dirt down over his mound in the earth and all desire, all sight, all pain, was ended.

  When she left, it felt as if his entire world had walked out of church that day.

  His metro stop finally arrived, and he stood weakly, almost dropping the bundle of flowers in the process, causing a woman to look at him with a bit of concern. He smiled at her, as if to say “I’m just a foolish old man,” realizing that he really was, and then stepped out onto the platform and directly into a cold gust of air. This storm was relentless.

  He opened his umbrella and began walking the three blocks it would take to get to her, his head a bit woozy, taking notice to watch his step as he came across the platform and out to the sidewalk.

  A few weeks after Goodbye Day he simply couldn’t take it anymore. He’d cracked and called her. She didn’t answer. He didn’t leave a voice mail. Two weeks later, he tried again with the same results. He knew she must’ve seen his number on caller ID, so when she didn’t call back for a second time? The mourning began. It really was over, this thing that had never really had a chance to start.

  At the time, he had no idea how right he really was.

  It was Marlena Arriola, during a meeting of the Pioneer Club, engaging in a random piece of church gossip, who had mistakenly brought an end to his world. She’d heard the news from a friend of Gabriella’s aunt. It had been a car accident. Gabriella was driving alone, on her way home to the apartment she shared with her mother in Monrovia, when her car was caught between a semi that had blown a tire and the center divider.

  As he walked now beneath the night sky, he waited for the tears to come. They always did on this walk. He let them pass, entered her building, nodded politely at the woman at the front desk, and made his way into the elevator, which he rode up to the tenth floor.

  When he made his way to her room, he knocked gently, then entered.

  Her bed was in the center, the headboard the only thing lit now as the machines around her that helped her to breath, and stay alive, buzzed, beeped and whirred. She was so thin as to be nearly skeletal, her skin taut across her face, and yet still she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  “Hi,” he said, pulling up a chair next to her bed. “It’s me. I brought your magazines.” They both knew full well that she hadn’t been conscious the past nine months, that technically, medically, she was brain-dead. But he didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it. Not when he could still feel the warmth of her hand or see her pulse, dancing in peaks and valleys, there on the heart monitor. So, he came and read her articles from the magazines she loved, convinced that somewhere, somehow, she might be able to hear him, and feel him, and know that he had not given up on her.

  But the reading would come later. First, always first, was their song. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his smartphone, opened his music app and pushed play, then waited for the piano and violin to usher in the opening chords of Ombra Mai Fu.

  The song he’d told her to look up one day on iTunes, because it was one of his favorites. And she had, nervously telling him a few days later that it was unlike any song she’d ever heard.

  He read many studies on how music helped mental patients, especially those suffering from dementia. Perhaps it was a stretch to hope that it would help those in a coma too, but he had to try. Because if she could still hear, she would know, from this song alone, that it was him there, just on the other side of her eyelids.

  And he needed her to know that.

  To know that even if she was all the way on the other side of the universe, trapped between this life and the next, he was still here, waiting for her. That she would never, ever be alone.

  As the music played, Father Bernardino Soltera lowered his head and prayed, as he always did, for a miraculous healing in the woman before him.

  He whispered pleas of intercession and healing. So many years still ahead in her young life. He asked the Lord for those years back, for her, asked Him for help both divine and all-powerful, knowing full well that if one day she actually did awaken and look at him again with those precious eyes of perpetual surrender, it would most likely be the end of him.

  He prayed knowing that in saving her soul? He might very well lose his own.

  Still.

  He prayed.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  When Hector saw Burro making his move, he left his position with Bennie and Chico at the cocktail table without saying a word and intercepted him on the dance floor. Burro was startled as Hector pushed him back into the s
ea of dancing bodies.

  “What’s going on, jefe? I got a clean shot, man!”

  “No, you don’t. She’s standing right next to him. But whatever. I got this.”

  Burro’s face contorted with confusion. “What?”

  “You want to run my crew, homie?” Hector said, his heart leaking rage with each beat.

  Blinking, Burro looked shocked, then he nervously glanced at the gun Hector had pulled from his pants.

  “I told you, jefe,” he said, his voice shaking. “Those are lies.” But his hand was gripping his own gun firmly and he was turning towards Hector like a snake.

  Hector ended any threat immediately. “It’s all yours.”

  “Wacha mean?” Burro said, now looking frustrated. Hector almost felt sorry for him. He was dumb as a doorstop. He’d last six months, maybe a year, before someone killed him off.

  “No need to get jumpy, compa,” Hector said, glancing at Burro’s gun. “I mean it. I’m done. I don’t want a stake in the game no more.”

  Burro blinked, then Hector pulled him close and spoke directly into his ear. “I’m gonna do this job myself and suffer the consequences. This bastard is mine. I mean it. You’re off the hook, we’re square, you can take the lead when I go inside. I’ll vouch for it on one condition: no harm to Bennie or Chico, are we clear on that?”

  Greed, pride, the lust for power. They all swam like pollywogs through Burro’s eyes. Then, in shock or disbelief, or Hector imagined probably a little of both, he managed only two words. “You sure?”

  Hector nodded. “Disappear now. No one else has seen you. Even if they did, it don’t matter. Just get away from this place as fast as you can and wait for the dust to settle. Tomorrow, go directly to Ramon. Got it?”

  Burro nodded, then tapped his forehead to Hector’s. “Por la familia,” he said with innocent vigor. It was the most honest thing Burro had said or done in a long time. Rival-to-be or no, Hector respected that, just as he respected the fact that Burro was only steps away from following orders that could’ve got him hard time if he got caught. That was worth something.

  “Por la familia,” Hector replied. “Buena suerte!. Good luck, vato.”

  Then Burro, probably excited at the opportunity that lay ahead of him, melted away into the crowd and headed towards the lobby and the exit beyond.

  With that done, Hector shifted his gun in his hand and turned back to the bar.

  He never talked to God much. Never figured He would listen. But he thanked Him now, for the numbness that spread all over his body and especially his heart. It was the numbness that allowed him to see Marisol cuddled up against David, her head on his chest as she beamed with happiness, without shattering.

  He was calm, cool and collected. Just like the gunslingers in those Louis L’Amour paperbacks he’d read all through eighth grade. He had a job to do and it was time to do it. There were no saloon doors here, but it was a bar, after all. He smiled and felt crazy.

  Marisol saw him first, when he was only fifteen feet away, and the smile was gone long before she saw the gun. Because she knew.

  She knew because she knew Hector, like no one else on this earth, and the face she now wore was one of both dismay and resignation. As if she were mad at herself for not knowing better, or for ever getting her hopes up that this wouldn’t happen.

  As Hector stepped forwards, she tried to save David. She screamed and pushed him away from her, but it was too late. The music went silent beneath the roar of his gun, the first bullet hitting him in the right side of his chest, the second bullet, the meanest bullet of all, striking Marisol in the throat.

  She clutched at her neck as she stumbled backwards.

  Her friends were screaming and people were running in all directions . . . except towards him. He was pretty sure that was a natural reaction when you saw someone who had just shot two people.

  His heart kinda, sorta felt something for her when the blood from her neck started gushing out and joining the red of her dress.

  Her pretty red dress. Which she’d worn tonight for him. For David. To make him proud. To turn him on.

  Hector sneered with hatred. So much for that idea.

  Again, he remembered that Hemingway story, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” and he laughed.

  “This is how that story was supposed to end, Ernest!” he screamed.

  Then he shot David Fonseca again, this time catching him in the forearm as David spun and began to run down the bar.

  Hector followed, relentlessly, like a hunter on safari, as David dodged and ducked between people.

  “I see you, David,” Hector mumbled, the insanity in his own voice scaring him a little. “I see you hiding in the tall grass.”

  He squeezed off two more shots, missing both times. One of the bullets hit the bar and wooden splinters exploded in all directions; the other one hit the wall behind the bar and shit started to collapse downward, bottles of liquor shattering in a waterfall of broken glass as the bartenders ducked and ran.

  But, still, his ears felt plugged. All the sounds of the world were muted. He heard them, but at a long, long distance. Something in him squirmed and thrashed against what he was doing, against the horrible, horrible things he was doing. That he had done.

  Marisol. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.

  But he was tired of caring anymore.

  Because nobody ever really cared about him on this earth. He laughed with sadness.

  Not even God had loved him.

  “Did ya, Big Guy?” Hector mumbled. “No. You never loved me either.”

  The lights that were hazy and moving in slow motion, sped back up to normal speed. All the sounds of terror and chaos erupted around him at full volume again.

  “All I wanted was my books,” Hector screamed to that big eye in the ceiling. “And for guys to quit beating up my mom! But you didn’t give a shit, did you?”

  David was running for a painted red door at the back wall, and Hector followed patiently, not wanting to waste his last bullet, only having to wave the gun a few times at a couple of guys who were approaching quietly from his left, intent on playing heroes. Once on the wrong end of his trigger, they fled faster than everyone else.

  Anger and sorrow and pain gripped at him like a heart attack as tears of dismay filled his eyes. “I even prayed, man. Lots of times! And you never cared. You never answered any of them! Why? Why didn’t you? Was I really so bad?”

  When David went through the door, he ran through a kitchen and down a hallway. Hector wiped away his tears and hustled after him, smacking a fleeing chef in the back of the head with the butt of his handgun for not getting out of the way quick enough. At the end of the hall, David turned left.

  Hector approached the corner carefully, expecting him to be lying in wait on the side, but he wasn’t. A pan clanged to the floor in a room up to his right and Hector went to the sound, ready for the final showdown with the man who took his love and ruined his life.

  It wasn’t much of a showdown.

  David had fallen sideways onto a pallet stacked with bags of potatoes, his shirt red as blood poured down his arm. The chest shot had evidently torn up a lung; he was wheezing badly and his eyes were wild with desperation. In his one free hand, he was holding a frying pan.

  “That’s all you got?” Hector said softly.

  David glared at him in shock. “Why? I just work here, man.”

  Hector looked him over. “You really don’t know who I am, do you?”

  His face was a mirror of pain, and a thick sweat had broken out over his forehead, but it was obvious when the deep look of recognition finally hit him. And this was really the final betrayal, in Hector’s mind. Marisol had told him all about Hector. Without a doubt.

  Because David Fonseca immediately took on the appearance of a man who knew it was all over. Completely. And with that appearance, came the defiance. “She never loved you, anyway!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, right before Hector shot h
im in the forehead.

  The seconds that followed added up very slowly, but also very quickly. It was as if what he’d done had shifted the universe somehow, as crazy as that sounded. His passion and rage quenched, Hector was immediately, irrevocably and completely overwhelmed with excruciating remorse.

  His life was over. A stark film of horror spun around him like a spider’s web. He’d murdered someone. Someone defenseless. In cold blood. He would find no joy in anything, not even books, the same way, ever again. He would not wake or sleep a single day without the memory of this night.

  “Oh, God,” he whispered. “What have I done?”

  Instantly, he wanted to take it all back. He dropped the gun and leaned against the doorjamb. “I’m sorry, God. I’m so sorry.”

  He heard The Smiling Midget’s faint whistle first, then saw his outline as he was slowly making his way down the corridor toward him. But there was a scratching sound too, almost a screeching.

  When he grew closer, Hector could see that The Smiling Midget was dragging two insanely long knives down the hallways with him, the tips of which were digging into the walls and causing the sound. The Smiling Midget’s smile was now an ominous sneer. Man, oh man. I really didn’t think you had it in ya, buddy boy. But? Good. Job.

  Hector looked to David’s dead eyes, then back to The Smiling Midget.

  You ready for the big time, Hector? I hope so. First, though, I need something from you, something I’ve been waiting a long time to take. Your soul. It’s your turn, ya know. Like poor Boxer that day in his cell? Everyone finds out their rank, remember? Sooner or later.

  “No,’ Hector said. Panic rose but then was squelched. Did he really think he could do this horrible thing and not have a price to pay? His remorse returned, and with it regret, and with the regret? A profound and devastating sorrow. For David. For Marisol. For Hymie.