The Parker Trilogy Page 38

  “What . . . How’d you know what I was thinking?”

  Napoleon shrugged. “It’s one of the perks of the job.”

  “The job? What job?”

  “I already told you, you know what’s going on, Parker. You just gotta get it into your head.”

  “Get what into my head?”

  “A larger . . . perspective.”

  Seeing Trudy come out of the bathroom, Parker stepped forward and closed the door of the apartment. Lowering his voice, he stared down at the apartment complex pool in shock before murmuring, “You’re not really here. It’s finally happening. I’m losing my mind.”

  Chills ran over his arms, across his shoulders and down his back as he looked at his dead partner again, just standing there as if he’d stopped by for a beer.

  Napoleon sighed deeply. “You ain’t losing nothing, rookie. Quite the contrary.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re gaining something, really. More than ninety-nine percent of this planet gets to gain.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Proof,” Napoleon said as he unfolded his arms and waved one hand up and down himself, “right here in front of you, that there’s an afterlife.”

  Parker rubbed his hand over his face and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Napoleon was still there.

  “Oh my God,” Parker said as his knees went weak and he leaned against the patio railing. “How? How is this possible?”

  “It’s a long story, but the Reader’s Digest Condensed version—”

  “The what?”

  Napoleon rolled his eyes. “Never mind. Shoulda known you’ve never read Reader’s Digest. Okay. The short version is that Kyle Fasano had a mission, and once he completed it he opted not to move on—to the next life, as it were—and since I conveniently died right around the same time? Well, I took his place.”

  Parker smiled at first, then laughed in utter, overwhelming and astoundingly deep disbelief. “Man. No way.”

  “Yes. Way.”

  “I’m imagining all this. It’s all in my head, I want—” and Parker caught himself, the pain of the blood on the grass and Efren’s screams back upon him again, like reverb on a bad speaker that just could . . . not . . . be . . . unplugged. “I want this.”

  “Want what?”

  “I want you to be alive. To be okay. To be there to play catch with Efren instead of me. You should see him, he’s got a—”

  “Strong arm, I know. What in the world makes you believe I can’t see him?”

  Parker swallowed hard. “You can?”

  “From time to time, between assignments, I get to visit. He actually throws better than your sorry ass, Parker, I’ve gotta say.”

  Parker blinked and closed his eyes again. This was all beyond belief. But he noticed that this time, when he opened his eyes again, he didn’t expect Napoleon to be gone.

  “Step one: We admit that we are powerless over our lives.”

  “What?”

  “Step two: We come to believe and accept that a power greater than ourselves can restore our sanity.”

  Parker shrugged in confusion.

  “Step three: We make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we each understand Him.”

  “Okay . . . what’s all that?”

  “It’s from Alcoholics Anonymous, Parker. The beginning of the twelve-step program.”

  “What’s that have to do with me?”

  Napoleon looked at him again, but this time with sympathy in his eyes. “Rookie. I never knew. What you’d been through. What you survived. In all fairness, we’d just met when the Fasano case took off like a rocket, but still, I was so caught up in my own wounds back then that I still doubt I would’ve ever caught on. I woulda trained you and then kicked you out into the world.”

  “What’s that have to do with—”

  “We both know you still struggle with it. We both know that sometimes you try to hide in a bottle or at the bottom of a glass.”

  Parker didn’t like where the conversation was heading, so he changed it. “Dude. I’m sorry to keep repeating myself, but . . . how is anything of this happening?”

  The clouds overhead were empty and windswept. In the distance, however, and approaching from the west, was another bank of dark clouds with swollen bellies.

  “Okay, Parker. We don’t have long. Trudy will be out with a cup of coffee and an apology for you soon. Even though she has nothing to apologize for, asswipe.”

  “You can tell the future, too?” Parker asked as he spread his hands wide.

  “Only in seconds, not minutes or anything.”

  “Oh, gee. Forget it then. That doesn’t count!” Parker chuckled with sarcasm.

  “Anyway. Let’s cut the crap, okay? You saw The Gray Man in Victoria Brasco’s driveway the night that Kyle Fasano disappeared. We both know it, so don’t try to deny it. Then? You saw that angel at the car accident on the highway, sent to collect the soul of the man who died, right?”

  Parker nodded.

  “Then you were hit with that odd feeling before it all went bad at the park. When you were—”

  “At the motel, with Murillo. Yeah. That was a trip. I knew . . . like knew . . . beyond a shadow of a doubt that I shouldn’t have let you leave without me. I tried to get there in time, man. I’m sorry, I did, I’m so—”

  “Don’t be sorry. I doubt it would’ve made a difference. Or it might’ve made the wrong difference.”

  “How so?”

  “You got to that park at the exact moment you needed to . . . to save Efren, not me. See what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah. You’re saying that if I’d gotten there earlier, maybe you would’ve been spared but Efren might’ve died.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay. Fine. But why did I see any of that? The Gray Man. The angel. Why was I even involved?”

  “Great questions. The easy answer is because you were meant to.”

  “Meant to?”

  “Maybe because of your heart, your mind, your conscience. Only God knows, Parker, why He chooses who He chooses to do what needs to be done. Every sinner has a future, every saint has a past. Everyone’s broken, in different places, and everyone can find redemption, in different ways.”

  “And now . . . I mean . . . What is this? You. Here. Now.”

  “Because you’ve been chosen to help with something else, Parker.”

  “With what?”

  His dead friend said two words, short but heavy. “Güero Martinez.”

  Parker squinted. “Güero Martinez?”

  “He’s bad news, Parker.”

  “So, what, we investigate this guy now or something? I mean, together?”

  “Well last I checked, your current partner is still in the hospital, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ask the cap if you can work solo until Campos—that wannabe playboy—gets off his ass and comes back. I got a feeling the cap will agree. Trust me.”

  “Uh huh . . .”

  Napoleon chuckled. “Still bullheaded, rookie? I mean, as if you’re really going to say no to God?” Then he blinked away.

  Trudy opened the apartment door, each hand reloaded with another cup of coffee. “Hey, I just wanna say that I’m—”

  Parker cut her off. “No,” he said, “I’m the one who should be sorry. And I am.”

  She stepped forward and he put one arm around the small of her back, feeling her warmth.

  The Gray Man was somber as he looked at Hector. Down the block and around the corner is a row of houses. One of them has a blue door, the paint chipped and splintered. Do you remember it?

  Hector did. “Yeah. It’s the house Tito and his crew used to stash the drugs in. Freaky-ass house. Always hated it.”

  Yes. You probably sensed them there even before you joined their side.

  “Them?”

  Demons rule that house, Hector. They have for generations. In the 1960s, it
was a den of false preaching that led soul after soul astray. Then, in the 1970s, it was a stopover for a would-be serial killer, before he worked up the actual courage to kill. The creatures there aided and abetted his growth and development, speaking into his sleep and making faces at him in the mirrors, helping him become a monster before he moved to Missouri and began patiently hunting down gay men like they were deer. Later, in the eighties, a young girl by the name of Lily Gonzalez was gang raped in the cellar by the original “crew”—as you call them—your gang. They would then establish it as a base of operations for drug sales for the next thirty years. As for poor Lily? She slit her wrists at a club in West Hollywood, drunk with despair and self-loathing.

  “That’s sad and all, man, but—”

  No. It’s worse than that, Hector. Sad is what happens when things can hardly be avoided. But all the things I just told you? Completely, utterly, irrevocably avoidable.

  “Yeah. Okay. But what’s it got to do with me?”

  The Gray Man flashed a bittersweet smile. You? Oh. Nothing. Everything. One day you, at age twelve, in a white T-shirt with a blue pocket, torn jeans and a pair of Nikes—

  “With a hole in the toe of the right shoe. I remember them.” Hector put his hands on his hips.

  Yes. That’s correct. It’s good that you remember. You walked up the steps to that door and asked to be a part of something. You had no idea that “something” was a tradition of evil and depravity.

  “Look, man. My whole life hasn’t been being bad.”

  No one’s ever is. But the smart people play the percentages, Hector. They try to pay attention to what they’ve done and how they’ve done it. That logic is put in you at the moment of your creation. Be good. Do good. Help others. Respect your heart. Keep an eye on the sky. Remember that someone is watching. It’s all so simple, really.

  “So . . . I’m no different, I—”

  The Gray Man turned, stepped forward, put a hand on Hector’s shoulder and leaned into his face. You have caused countless people to become addicted drugs, as we’ve already discussed. If that weren’t enough, you sent your cousin to his own death, put a bullet through the throat of a girl you once claimed to love, and murdered, by your own hand, an innocent human being who hadn’t harmed anyone seriously in his entire life.

  The night around them was surrendering to the dawn and the street was crazy quiet—the kind of quiet that makes you completely uncomfortable. Hector could swear he could hear his own breathing as he bit at his lower lip and then glared at The Gray Man. “That’s life, man.”

  No, Hector. That’s YOU. There’s a difference.

  “Fine. So, what now?”

  Make the walk. Go to that house. Enter it. It’s all but abandoned now. The demons that lived there got bored and moved on. But one stayed behind and another visits him from time to time. They call to the children that walk by on the way to and from school each day. Just waiting. Patiently. For the first curious one to venture on in.

  “And when I get there? What the hell do I do then?”

  The Gray Man chuckled. Hell will do YOU, boy. If you’re not careful.

  Hector shook his head. “This is all crazy. Demons? Hell and all that? Forget this shit, man. I’m outta here.”

  He turned and took three quick strides, part of him afraid he would be levitated off the ground again or jerked back into the force field. But, no. Nothing. After another few steps it somehow came to him, clear as day, that The Gray Man wasn’t going to stop him. So, he stopped himself and turned around.

  The Gray Man stood there, just within the reach of the only working streetlight, his hands tucked into his gray slacks and his gaze firm.

  “I get it, old man,” Hector said with a smile. “Free will and all that, right?”

  A small, subtle nod. It can be no other way, Hector. I can’t force you. If you want the end that awaits you then go on the run. Wait for them to hunt you down and kill you, either the demons you weren’t even aware you were serving or the cops who are going to be after you for what happened tonight. Whichever. One way or another, Hector, you will find a brutal end.

  Hector spread his arms wide. “So be it. Thanks for the heavenly advice and all that.”

  It was brave talk, because on the inside he was shaking. Using the same pride he had used all his life to scratch out an existence, he turned again to walk away.

  The Gray Man spoke again. She’s still alive, Hector.

  Hector froze and narrowed his eyes. “Who?”

  Marisol.

  “What? No, man. She’s dead. There’s no way—”

  The bullet entered the lower right corner of her larynx, clipped the disk between her third and fourth vertebra and damaged the spinal nerves there before passing out the back of her neck.

  Behind The Gray Man a stray dog ran across the street, from one alley to the next. In the distance overhead, a plane with flashing red lights was barely visible through the clouds.

  Hector felt as if his lungs had collapsed around his heart. “No.”

  She lost a lot of blood and is in surgery right now, barely clinging to life.

  “Which hospital?”

  As if you could really go there?

  “I could—”

  No. It’s not about what you could do, it’s about what you can do. What on earth makes you think that anything good could come of you showing up there? Her family, her friends? They’d lose their minds.

  “Please, man. There’s gotta be something I can do,” Hector said, the words coming between short breaths. “I didn’t mean to do what I did. Please. You’ve gotta know that.”

  All I know is that I’ve been tasked to help a cold-blooded killer, Hector. Since we’re being honest with one another? I don’t like it. But unlike you, I’ve learned to serve without question, to trust in the greatest will of all. Your will, like that of most humans, is a very fickle thing. Even now, until you were given something you wanted, you were ready to just keep letting evil reign over your heart and simply abandon those who could be helped by your mission.

  Hector wanted to protest, but the vision of Marisol in her red dress at The Mayan, her face melting in fear at the sight of him, pierced his mind. Tears filled his eyes, hot and bitter. Unable to speak, he surrendered with a nod of agreement that wouldn’t stop, that felt pathetic but also somehow liberating.

  I can’t promise that you can save her. She could die any second. I only mentioned it because for some reason you still think this whole thing is all about you.

  “I’ll do whatever you ask. I’ll go to the house right now and do what you want me to. So . . . so those kids won’t get tempted or hurt or whatever. I’ll—shit, this all sounds so insane—I’ll go stop Curtis somehow. I’ll stop him and help all these other million other people however I can. But, please. Just help Marisol. However you can.”

  You’re sure?

  “Yeah, man. I understand. You’ve called me out.”

  You still don’t get it, do you, boy? It’s not me who has called you out. God has.

  Hector looked at The Gray Man, speechless.

  And He wants to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, after a lifetime of spreading hate in the world, what are you willing to do to spread love in it, Hector?

  After a few seconds, Hector gathered himself together and was able to speak, though barely in a whisper. “Okay, man. Fine. What now?”

  The Gray Man motioned his head toward the corner. As he did, all the broken streetlights between them and there lit up, one by one, illuminating a path.

  In a somber voice, he repeated what he’d said earlier. Down the block and around the corner is a row of houses. One of them has a blue door, the paint chipped and splintered.

  Chapter Eight

  Father Soltera remained motionless for a moment before the question came to him, in spite of his horror. “Who tends this place, then?”

  Michiko sighed. “No one. Not anymore. It’s a vortex now.”

  “A vortex?”

&
nbsp; “The misery accomplished here was so profound, so successful in its evil, that it now self-perpetuates.”

  “Then we’re alone here?”

  “I did not say that. There are creatures who have chosen to make this their home and one in particular whose job it is to guard it.”

  Her words seemed to echo in his ears. The fog around them had grown thicker again and it was as if it was now solid enough to deflect sound. Taking a few steps to his right, he stumbled on a thick tree root that was buried beneath a mound of dead leaves.

  Not for the first time, he sensed that they were being watched. He tried to blame it on what Michiko had just said but he knew it had nothing to do with that. The hairs on his skin were up and he had that feeling a person gets, in their core, when they know that strange eyes are upon them. Instinctively, he reached for his crucifix.

  “That will help to protect you,” Michiko said. “And I am here, too. But we mustn’t stay here. We have to keep moving.”

  She pushed on and he followed close behind, trying not to look too much to his left or right. The bodies were swaying everywhere, some close to one another, others hundreds of feet apart, and at one point he could’ve sworn that he heard one of them trying to whisper something to him.

  In spite of himself, he looked toward the sound. A woman dressed in a blue dress with white edging was hanging with her back to him and her legs kicked ever so slightly, just enough to spin her body slowly around to face him. Her eyes were oozing the same blackish liquid that stained the plants and forest floor, but her pupils were clearly visible, and she was looking straight at him as her lips moved weakly.

  “I’m a whore and so are you,” she said.

  She repeated herself, this time with a tiny, strangled giggle that sounded more like she was choking. “I’m a whore and so are you.”

  “Don’t listen to them,” Michiko warned.

  “Them?”

  Up and to the left a man in a yellow polo shirt, blue slacks and white dress shoes was moving his arms slightly, making himself swing from side to side. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, and though he was already partially decomposed, he seemed to be trying to smile as he spoke.

  “She’ll get you killed here, stupid man. Run. Run away. Run.” His whisper was coarse and the bones in his broken neck creaked as he swayed.