The Parker Trilogy Page 36

  After jamming the sticks into her overnight bag, she guzzled a glass of orange juice, grabbed a cold bagel and headed out the door.

  She was in her parking garage when her phone rang. It was Tonya, who agreed on both counts: to be safe, Luisa should be moved, and to Maggie’s immense relief, Maggie could be her escort to the new location. She would get her settled before they called Luisa’s mother.

  One change was made to the plan, though. Tonya told Maggie to go to the hospital first to deal with the police. Tonya said she would have Luisa packed and ready to go by the time Maggie arrived at Eden Hill.

  In the past, Maggie’s grandmother would appear to her in visions to warn her when she was making a mistake. But not anymore. There was no more otherworldly intuition to tap into, no more magical sixth sense. So when she agreed with Tonya and began driving to White Memorial Medical Center, she had no idea what a fateful decision she had just made.

  Chapter Five

  When Parker awoke, it was to the sensation of Trudy’s fingers dragging gently across his face and temple. She had spooned against him and her warmth was both comforting and nourishing. His eyes fluttered open to the wall nearest the bedroom door, which was opened to the living room beyond.

  “Hey,” she whispered.

  He tried to answer, but at first, he couldn’t. It was as if he’d fallen into a deep well within himself, with slippery walls, shiny from the light creeping in from way, way overhead. The darkness was back, blacker than ever. In his sleep it had wrapped itself around him like a python intent to feed. When he answered her, it was with one word, parroted back to her. But it took all he had to say it. “Hey.”

  She put her head on his shoulder. “I called off work today.”

  He took a deep breath. You didn’t have to do that, he wanted to say. Instead, he just nodded.

  “I know you probably don’t want to talk about it yet, right?”

  Again, he nodded.

  “Okay. Maybe later. I’ll make us some coffee and eggs and be right back, okay?”

  He wanted to say, No. Please stay here. Right next to me. Because while you’re gone I may be swallowed whole by the darkness. But he was a grown man, not a child, so he chastised himself and replied, “Sure.”

  He felt her roll over to the other side of the bed and put on her robe, which was partially open when she walked past him, allowing him to see her strong thighs and tight stomach. Her red hair, curly and tangled with sleep, fell across the back of the robe like a flame.

  She was such a good woman and he knew he didn’t deserve her and probably never would. He’d figured that out a while ago and now he was just waiting for her to do the same. To wake up one of these mornings and roll out of bed like she just did and be struck with a subtle truth: he was a damaged, mostly pathetic man and she could do much, much better.

  He heard her turn on the stereo in the living room. Spanish guitars began to play on low volume. Not an upbeat song but not a sad one, either. He rolled over onto his back and told himself to begin working through his various therapy techniques again. After that he could wait, and if negative thoughts resurfaced he could use counter-thought exercises to attempt to nullify them. The one thing he wasn’t supposed to do outside the controlled environment of his therapist’s office, at least not yet, was to imagine and re-experience the events as vividly as possible.

  If only it were that easy. Avoiding thoughts of what happened to Waheeb was possible sometimes, and he’d become an expert at avoiding what happened at Outpost Keating.

  But then came the bloody grass at Evergreen Park, half of his partner’s neck blown off. And now? Well, now it was never going to be a fair fight, because his eyes were like mini-projectors that kept showing him Campos, shot the first time, then the second, before going down, and the run across the dance floor of The Mayan that followed.

  It felt like a marathon run to hell, wanting to get to Campos to save him but also not wanting to get to him, for fear that Parker would arrive to find that another man who had counted on him was dead now too.

  He heard a pan on the stove and Trudy humming along to the song in tiny spurts. Looking around the room, he saw her jeans on the floor and stared for a moment at the jewelry doll she had on the dresser, wire arms spread wide, chains and earrings hung over them. Her bag was on a nearby chair and he could see her makeup over the sink in the bathroom. She was all moved in and spread out. Surely this was a sign she wasn’t going anywhere. But if—

  Stop. Focus. Focus . . .

  On the positives. Campos was not dead, only wounded. Parker had pushed for the move on the club, but Campos had been down with the idea one hundred percent, too. There had been nothing anyone could’ve done with a random shooting like that. There’s no way you can blame yourself for this one, man. Even if you want to.

  It was true, and it was the first handhold he could use to begin climbing out of his head.

  There was another positive, too. The visitor. In the hallway. But Parker skipped it, because he feared it either held a truth too massive for him to bear right now or it was a lie that was surely a sign he was slipping into outright madness.

  Minutes passed, and he yawned a few times against the new day before Trudy appeared with a TV tray that held a big plate of eggs and buttered toast, napkins and two forks.

  “Sit up,” she said as she put the tray in front of him. She smiled, “And don’t eat it all before I can get back with the coffee.”

  She disappeared again and came back with two mugs they’d bought together at the Pasadena Sidewalk Chalk Festival, one red, the other white, with contrasting designs of chalk lines that intersected from one mug to the next when they were placed side by side. The coffee inside them was shiny, like onyx. Neither of them took cream or sugar, and she placed the mugs on the tray before she carefully climbed into bed and sat cross-legged next to him.

  “Thanks,” he said softly. He wasn’t really hungry, but he forced a few bites down if only to keep his coffee from hitting an empty stomach.

  She nodded, picked up a fork and began to eat with one hand as she pushed hair out of her face with the other.

  This. This was the hardest part. Talking when you didn’t want to talk. Feeling obliged to, knowing you should, knowing it was only decent but not wanting to be decent. Still, in her face he saw a second handhold to pull himself out, and when she looked at him with those insanely green eyes, a third.

  Finally, he managed something. “Campos is okay.”

  “I know. You told me that when you got home last night, before you passed out.”

  “He got lucky. The whole thing went sideways so fast . . .”

  She stayed quiet and kept eating but it was obvious she was waiting for more.

  “We went in and had the guy right where we wanted his ass . . . then some random thug comes out of nowhere for some sort of revenge killing and begins gunning for one of the bouncers,” Parker said, speaking cautiously, as if the words were like incantations that threatened to bring the prior night’s events to life again.

  Her eyebrows ducked with concern. “Then what happened?”

  “Bullets were flying, bodies—” His breath caught the rest of the words in his throat like a vice. He put his fork down and fought off an intense wave of nausea.

  Her hand reached out to grab his.

  “Jesus, God Almighty, Trudy. It was chaos. Some girl was shot, people were getting trampled. I couldn’t get to him—to Campos—at first. I—”

  She gave him a moment, then pressed. “You what?”

  “I froze! Shit! I froze.”

  “Stop it. Don’t flip it around, Evan.”

  “What?”

  “You said he was already shot. It wasn’t your . . . freezing for a second or whatever . . . that got him shot.”

  He wanted to argue, but she was right. Still, he felt himself slipping a bit, back down into his head.

  She continued. “Please don’t start making connections again, babe. Like . . .”

>   He ran a hand through his hair, feeling suddenly hot. “Like what?”

  “Like with Napoleon.”

  The name was like an omen verbalized, able to portend either good or ill to follow. At least it used to be. Until that moment in the hallway at The Mayan. Now?

  You can’t tell her. She’ll think you’ve lost it completely.

  A thought came to him. No. If she loves you, she’ll believe you.

  “What?” she said.

  Parker cleared his throat. Evidently, he’d spoken the words aloud. “Nothing.”

  “No. You mumbled something. What was it?”

  He shook his head and that sort of did her in for some reason. She’d no doubt had a long night too, and he felt bad for her because he, and his career, were the cause of it.

  It was probably yet another reason that she should just leave. Loving a cop was always a bad bet, and loving a detective was just doubling down on the same long odds. A look of hurt crossed her face as she finished her eggs, her fork digging harder and harder against the plate with each bite.

  They finished the meal in silence before she got up to shower and he took everything to the kitchen. After a few moments, he felt bad and went to the bathroom to tell her he was sorry for being so hard to talk to sometimes, but as he drew closer to the door he heard her crying softly in the shower.

  His mental progress evaporated as he lost all the handholds and fell back down into the darkness. He needed some air, so he threw on some sweats and a T-shirt and went out the front door to the balcony of their second-storey apartment. It was a weekday with overcast skies, a break between storms supposedly, so the pool below was empty and the rest of the complex quiet.

  It was while he was contemplating the look on Jin Yeung’s face after his gun hand had been knocked aside—by a ghost, no less—that he heard the voice of that very same ghost.

  “All this denial is going to kill you if you keep it up, rookie.”

  Parker’s eyes grew wide and his jaw dropped nearly right off his face when he turned and saw him, leaning on one shoulder against the wall next to the apartment door, a tight-lipped grin on his face.

  Napoleon Villa was back.

  Hector shivered against the dawn. At First and Gage there was a warehouse on one corner and houses with matching chain link fences stained with rust on the other two.

  On the corner, where he and The Gray Man were now standing, was an old wooden fence covered with old concert posters that was caving over into a tall stand of weeds. A nearby stop sign was so tagged with graffiti it was barely legible and a pair of tennis shoes hung on a power line overhead.

  The sun was just beginning to rise on the day, but all it offered was gray light, hidden as it was behind layer upon layer of cloud overhead.

  Hector looked at the man before him—just as gray as the clouds and just as foreboding. At about six foot three, he was taller than Hector. His face was chiseled, with a square jaw and granite-looking cheeks. His whole aura was gray, but his eyes were as dark as the night sky with specks of white. “What’s happening, man? This can’t be happening.”

  I told you already. You are a millionth, Hector.

  “What does that—”

  It means that on this night, across the madness of this world that you call home, at the precise moment when you took David Fonseca’s life from him, you were the millionth person to commit the same heinous act of murder. You are rare, Hector. This happens only once, every two years or so.

  “Great. So, I hit the crazy-train lottery, is that it? This is just nuts.”

  The Gray Man sighed. It is not. It is your reality.

  “What? To hell with that.”

  I wouldn’t use the word “hell” flippantly, Hector.

  “Why not?”

  Because you have been an excellent agent of that place for a very long time. And they are not going to like that you’ve been noticed—in fact, chosen—by my side.

  “Your side?”

  You know which side, Hector. Let’s stop playing games.

  “Look. I did what I had to do.”

  No. You did what you wanted to do. Tonight, in that club as much as that night on this corner, years ago.

  Stupefied, Hector replied. “Are we talking about . . .”

  Your first drug sale? Yes, we are. Do you remember it?

  “Yeah. Man. Whatever. Business is business. I was, like, what? Fifteen then?”

  His name was Thomas Kershaw. He was a married father of three children.

  “Hey. He was grown. He knew I was slinging the good stuff.”

  Yes, but like a good salesman, you up-sold him, didn’t you? I don’t normally rank sin, Hector. It’s not my place. I go where I’m told, commission who I’m told to commission. But the act you committed tonight? You have taken a life! He had an existence all his own to live out. And you come along and just snuff it out. It is so heinous that it is almost incomprehensible.

  The same deep, penetrating remorse that had enveloped him right after he’d killed David Fonseca now came over Hector again. Being aware that killing or being killed was part of the street life was one thing—you grew up accepting it—but it was different, somehow, this time.

  “Fine.” He shrugged with resignation. “Then help me take it back.”

  And how do you propose I do that?

  “Well,” Hector said, twisting his face up in frustration, “you’re an angel or whatever, right? Take us back in time. I swear, I won’t do it again.”

  The Gray Man shook his head, looked off down the street and said, I’m afraid that control over time is beyond my pay grade, Hector.

  As they spoke, a man came walking up the street from the east. Before long, another few men, these from their west, were coming.

  “What’s happening?”

  Don’t worry about that. Let’s back up again and focus. On Mr. Thomas Kershaw.

  “To hell with that bullshit, man!”

  The air crackled with energy again.

  “Okay. Okay. I-I’m sorry,” Hector stammered.

  The Gray Man put his hands on his hips. Now. One more time. Thomas Kershaw. What did you do?

  Scrambling back to the memory like a cat with its tail on fire, Hector struggled to piece together the facts. “He came in for some coke, but we had some good H that night, it had . . . just come in . . . and he’d always talked about trying it . . . he was just afraid . . .”

  A woman and two children were walking down the street now, hand in hand, distracting Hector further because he couldn’t make out their faces.

  Of the needles. Yes. Go on.

  “So . . . I showed him how. It was a bigger score and . . .”

  You were new, trying to impress the gang, but you were behind on your quota.

  “Yeah.”

  And?

  “So, I sold him the H. Then? I never heard from him again.”

  A half dozen more people arrived, and for a second Hector thought that they were emptying out of the houses around them, but they weren’t. All the homes were still shuttered and dark, with only a sporadic porch light and one working street lamp to light the street.

  Focus, Hector.

  “What’s going on, man? Who are all these people and where are they coming—”

  I said focus! So. Why do you think that is? Why do you think you never heard from him again?

  “I figured he found another supplier. He was always scared to come into the neighborhood. I figured it was that or the H scared him off.”

  Well. That’s not what happened.

  “Okay. Then . . . what?” The number of people around them grew even more.

  He OD’d the next night, trying to double the high you gave him that first time.

  “Hey. I never told him to go that hard at—”

  His eight-year-old daughter found him in a hammock in his backyard.

  “What?”

  She shook him for five minutes, crying out his name, before her mother heard her. He died with his eye
s wide open, Hector. That little girl will never be able to erase that image from her mind, no matter how old she grows. Her father’s eyes, staring both at her and at nothing at the same time.

  Hector looked away. “I didn’t know that, man. I didn’t.”

  No. And you have no idea the havoc you have wreaked across countless lives in your short time here on this earth. But you’re going to find out, one revelation at a time, in the long days and nights that await you.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Look at them all, Hector.

  Hector didn’t want to look but he felt compelled to. When he did, his breath poured out of him in one long gasp. Before him stood dozens upon dozens of people, all extremely decomposed.

  Do you know them all, Hector? The Gray Man asked.

  “N-n-no.”

  Yes. You do.

  The people all came to a stop in staggered sections, their feet scraping against the cement like sandpaper.

  “No, I don’t.”

  They’re all the people that in one way, shape or form, you’ve helped to kill in this world. Mostly through drugs, some through violence. All indirectly. If you look closely enough, you can even see—

  But Hector saw him before The Gray Man could finish. “Hymie?”

  There in the back of the crowd was his cousin, not decomposed enough yet to be completely unrecognizable. His face was slack and missing flesh in places, but his eyes . . . His eyes were intact and glaring.

  Instinctively, Hector took a few steps forward. But between him and Hymie were too many people. Too many dead people.

  The Gray Man waved his hand and they all disappeared.

  But you crossed the line from indirectly to directly with David Fonseca. And now, as a millionth, you have been chosen by God for a mission.