The Parker Trilogy Page 42

  “Then what a sad hour it is,” Parker replied, without missing a beat.

  Sharma smiled. She had white teeth, jet black hair pulled tightly to her scalp, and beige eyes that complimented her bronze-colored skin. On her left cheek, just below her eye, she had a small scar, about an inch long, that she made no attempt to hide. “Lacrosse,” she said suddenly.

  “Excuse me?” Parker said, feeling embarrassed that he’d been caught looking a little too long.

  “The scar. It’s from lacrosse. Everyone notices, eventually everyone asks. Best to just get it out there and over with. Nothing more exciting, I’m afraid!”

  They all laughed.

  But Agent Clopton only faintly. “Let’s take a seat,” she said. Taking out her cell phone, she pushed a button on it and the screen lit up in pale green. “Let everyone be advised that this discussion is being recorded. Present is Captain Brian Holland, Detectives Juan Murillo, Adam Klink and Evan Parker, all with the Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck Station, as well as myself, Special Agent Olivia Clopton, and CI Agent Anush Sharma with the Internal Revenue Service.” She paused before adding the date and time.

  Murillo and Klink looked at Parker as they all sat. “You good?” Murillo said with genuine concern in his voice.

  Parker nodded. It was Murillo’s way of tipping him off that—shell-shocked or not—a grilling was coming. And sure enough, it was.

  Agent Clopton was all business about how, why, where, when and how again Campos and Parker had gotten involved with the Asian Soldiers, East Los Vatos and Fresno Street Vatos. For whatever reason, after a few turns around the mulberry bush, she couldn’t accept the utter randomness of a cold case file on the death of a low-level gangster leading all the way down the rabbit’s hole to the number one Latino gangster in the city.

  Parker pushed through all the questioning until she was done.

  “You sure that’s all there is?” she asked.

  “Sure as shit,” Parker said, having run out of patience. Holland glared at him.

  “We still don’t know what happened to the guy in the supply room, though, do we? This . . .” Agent Clopton glanced at her notes. “Hector Villarosa guy?”

  Murillo, Klink and Holland all shook their heads, nearly in unison. Sitting next to each other at the conference table, they looked like myna birds.

  Parker waited for it, but Agent Clopton left it alone for some reason.

  After a few moments of silence, Parker leaned back in his chair and looked at Agent Sharma. “So. The IRS is in on this, too?”

  She nodded. “Yes. In conjunction with the Bureau, we’ve been watching Mr. Martinez’s business dealings for a while now, just from a healthy distance.”

  “Why’s that?” Captain Holland asked.

  Agent Sharma raised her eyebrows, tightened her lips into a thin line and nodded. “Because when we get him? We want it to stick.”

  “One hundred percent,” Clopton added.

  “He’s a high-level drug dealer with ties to the largest gang in the nation on one side and a network of gangs here in East Los Angeles on the other. One might think that finding things that would stick would be doable,” Holland replied.

  “Yes,” Clopton said with a tint of chill to her voice, “but the drugs are only half of it.”

  “Not even half,” Agent Sharma interjected.

  Clopton nodded.

  “Not even half?” Parker asked incredulously. “Then what’s the rest?”

  “Well,” Agent Clopton said, “you and your partner have upset the apple cart—accidentally, I know, but still—on one of the biggest sex trafficking rings in the United States.”

  The room went quiet for a few seconds before Klink whistled softly.

  “Yep,” Agent Sharma said. “And Güero Martinez? He’s the top dog.”

  “And a vicious dog at that,” Agent Clopton added.

  “How so?” Parker asked, not sure if he wanted to hear the answer.

  Clopton looked Parker dead in the eye. “How so? Well, let’s see. He has one building operating out in Cerritos with seventy girls. They’re each servicing, on average, thirty clients per day. The income? Over $12 million a year. Off that one location.” She paused and let that sink in before she said, “And now he’s working on a new upsell technique: minors, twelve to thirteen years old, by the hour.”

  Parker realized he was right. He really didn’t want to hear that answer.

  The house came alive with an eerie and muted red light, glowing through the cracks in the wooden floor boards. With it also came a slowly building heat.

  Hector glanced over his shoulder, just in time to see The Smiling Midget as he hopped up on the railing, took a seat, and sniggered as he let his legs dangle down in front of him.

  Here’s the funny thing, Hector, and we both know it: you don’t have your precious books with you now. No way to stop what’s coming. And before, welllll—he shrugged and continued—I tried to take it easy on you because you had a job to do and it was MY job to get you to do YOUR job and yada, yada, yada.

  Wally moved in front of Hector in a lumbering shuffle, his knuckles scraping on the floor and his breathing labored. Hector tried not to look into those red, beady eyes because each time he did, it felt like his own eyes began to burn, as if Wally’s eyes were like lasers or something, searing Hector’s retinas with his gaze.

  “So . . . so what?” Hector said, the words coming out like a question but completely without a point. He was trying to buy time because he had no idea what else to do.

  So, The Smiling Midget continued, I’ll tell you what. You’ve gone to work for the other side now. Which is pretty freakin’ amazing, if ya ask me. I mean, why they’d ever want you at all, much less after what you’ve done, is beyond me. He hocked a loogie and spat it to the floor below. Probably all about that mercy and grace stuff.

  Hector felt his neck tense from the constant looking back and forth between The Smiling Midget and Wally. The two seemed equally dangerous, but Hector had a feeling that the bigger threat was up there, on that railing, his stubby shoes kicking on the banisters and making them groan as he stared at Hector with a look of pure loathing.

  When Wally suddenly charged him, Hector instinctively jumped up three of the steps in one lunge, barely getting out of the way in time as one of the creature’s spiked hands swung downward and shattered an old table near the wall.

  The crash was deafening, and Hector was caught momentarily between two instincts: fight or flight. Now, committed to the stairway, he could only flee upwards, toward The Smiling Midget. That was not an option he wanted to take, so instead he leaped at Wally and grabbed him around the neck.

  Wally spun, and Hector spun with him, his chest and abdomen coming down across Wally’s back, which was thick and leathery, with small sharp spikes that tore into Hector’s chest and stomach. Grunting against the pain, he locked his bicep and forearm around Wally’s neck and squeezed with all his strength.

  He might as well have been trying to put a choke hold on a rhinoceros.

  Wally swung one arm backwards in a move that was purely inhuman, his shoulder socket rotating with a pop as he tried to whack Hector in the head with a clawed fist. He missed, but that fist still found a target in the small of Hector’s back. Hector screamed as pain erupted throughout his entire upper torso.

  The Smiling Midget began to laugh, his voice morphing into that of a carnival huckster. Gather round, folks! Witness the bucking bronco and the cowboy in for the ride of a lifetime!

  Grunting, Hector straddled his legs around the creature’s waist and struggled to hold on as Wally dipped and crashed his way from one side of the hallway to the other, the plaster walls exploding in white powder as old, wooden two-by-fours screamed in protest and threatened to give way.

  And they’re off!

  “Shit!” Hector yelled as his knee banged awkwardly off the stairway railing and he dropped the screwdriver.

  Then the room was spinning and spinnin
g, a blur of light one second that showed the front door, the next, the hallway wall, then The Smiling Midget with his hands up cheering, then the other hallway wall. Round and round it went, Hector’s dizziness growing. He had no weapons, nothing left to fight with . . .

  Except his teeth.

  And he used them, to clamp down hard on one of Wally’s grossly deformed ears. The taste of dirt, rotten meat and oil filled his mouth.

  Wally screamed as Hector bit off a chunk. Maggots began falling from the now open wound and Hector’s stomach threatened to impede his defense by vomiting up all its contents.

  Holding his food down, Hector saw an old light sconce on the wall nearby with a frosted glass crown, mounted on a skinny base with a sharp tip. He swung all his weight in its direction.

  Wally stumbled and screamed in rage, trying to reach back now with both hands to pull Hector off.

  The Smiling Midget kept at it. Three seconds, four seconds, how much more? Look at him go folks, like an uppity little whore!

  When the sconce was within reach, Hector took the only chance he had. He reached out with one hand and grasped it dead center as Wally rotated in another half circle. It ripped free of the wall.

  Oh! Wait a minute. What do we have here? Is he going to ride it out until—

  Hector began viciously stabbing Wally in the head, face and neck with the sconce, with an intensity that bore witness to his own terror. If this failed, he was a dead man, and Hector knew it.

  Wally’s screams of frustration turned into shrieks of agony. A thick, blackish-red sludge poured from his wounds and the smell of rotten eggs filled the air. Hector didn’t care. He kept stabbing. Over and over again.

  Wally spun and sandwiched Hector against the wall. Hector felt his ribs giving way before the wall behind him mercifully did so first. He smashed partially through it before Wally took them in the other direction and then began to stumble like a drunken man, legs going rubbery, his balance betraying him by the second as his blood poured out of at least a dozen wounds.

  He stood tall for one brief second, then toppled over sideways, like a tree. Seeing it coming, Hector leaped off at the last second, bounced into the wall opposite the staircase, then hit the floor on both knees.

  Rodeo Boy wins! The Smiling Midget said, but his voice was a bit quieter now and absent all its former glee.

  Hector looked up at him as he gasped for air.

  The Smiling Midget looked at Wally, then to Hector. You killed my friend, he said angrily.

  “You’re next, you little bastard,” Hector said as he scrambled to his feet and then stumbled and fell face first at the base of the stairs.

  Oh. We’ll have our moment, buddy boy. Trust. But . . . I’m a guest in this house, and, well, you just killed the host. He grunted, looked at Wally sadly and then back to Hector. It’d be downright rude of me to rip your guts out here and leave a mess.

  Using his arms, Hector pushed himself up and began to dog-crawl up the stairs, the sconce still in one hand, determined to use it to stab a hole right in The Smiling Midget’s head.

  He had just reached the top when The Smiling Midget jumped off the railing. As he landed, his shoes made a light thump on the old carpet and caused two little mushroom clouds of dust to plume upwards. Only feet away now, he spoke to Hector one last time. Not here. You and I will finish this where we first met. On the inside.

  Then he disappeared. As did the body of Wally.

  With him also went the red light. But it was not replaced with darkness. If only.

  “No!” Hector gasped.

  Instead the house was filled with red, blue and white lights, blinking through the windows of the house in different shades of intensity.

  When Hector was a kid, he and his friends used to call it the “homeboys’ night light” because a lot of nights, at bedtime, you could see them. Sometimes they were far away, other times they flashed right outside your window. Either way, the law always brought with it a light that held absolutely no hope when you were a ghetto kid. Because they were either there for someone you loved, someone you knew . . . or for you.

  “What’s happening?” Hector said to the empty house as he dropped the sconce and it tumbled end over end down the stairs.

  Justice, The Gray Man said as he stepped from a darkened doorway.

  A voice boomed over a megaphone from outside. “Hector Villarosa, this is the Los Angeles Police Department.”

  Hector spoke the final words along with whatever cop out there was saying them. “Come outside with your hands over your head.”

  If he’d heard it once in the neighborhood, he’d heard it a hundred times.

  Hector turned in shock to look at The Gray Man. “I thought if I did what you asked me to do, this wouldn’t happen.”

  It must.

  “This isn’t fair,” Hector protested. “This isn’t fair at all!”

  Ah, Hector. Don’t do it. Don’t.

  “Don’t what?” Hector screamed.

  Don’t blame heaven, Hector, for the consequences of your own making.

  Chapter Twelve

  When they were done screaming, the Fire-Belly Cats did not retreat. Instead, enraged, they went feral. Clawing and biting at everything—each other, tree roots that were protruding from the ground, anything they could－as if they were trying to kill the pain－before their eyes slowly filled again with purpose and they glared at Father Soltera with a hate that could only be human.

  These cats . . . at one point they were human? How?

  “Run, tomodachi!” Michiko screamed, shattering his thoughts. Instead, Father Soltera tried to say the word again, to use it as a weapon to perhaps compel the cats to flee entirely. But he couldn’t. Instead, the air of this place, as if it were a living force, filled his mouth and pushed at his tonsils, forcing him to gag.

  “I said run!” Michiko screamed again, and this time he complied without hesitation.

  Perhaps it was adrenaline or fear, most likely a heavy dose of both, but Father Soltera felt like he had the legs of a twenty-year-old as he ran up the slope. His legs pumping, he even managed to avoid tripping on a few rocks that were partially hidden in dirt.

  There was more hissing and cat cries from behind him. On the attack again, he heard Michiko’s blades swinging repeatedly, one dull thud after another sounding through the air as each cat was struck and cast to the ground.

  There’s no way she’s going to be able to protect me from all of them. No way at all.

  He heard a scratching, almost rattling sound. At first, he had no idea what was happening. Then, it became apparent: a swarm of wood beetles were coming out of all the knot holes in the trees around them.

  Father Soltera had no idea what wood beetles could do to a human being, but he didn’t want to find out. He kept running as some of the wood beetles took to flight, bouncing off his forehead and chin. Looking down, he saw that one had landed on his hand. The creature’s head vibrated from side to side as it tried to burrow into the webbing between two of his fingers. He swiped at it instinctively and it spun away into a thicket of dead bamboo leaves, exploding like a firecracker as it struck them.

  He heard footfalls behind him and looked back to see Michiko closing ground to catch up, her face scratched and bleeding. About three to four dozen cats were still in pursuit of her, but he noticed they were not running at full speed and that her swords and garments were covered in blood.

  He turned around just in time to avoid running into an area of dead brush, black as night, and recentered himself on the path. The plush forest up ahead had grown closer, green leaves and brown branches creating a mosaic that hinted at life. There was light between and beyond those trees. He just had to get there, somehow, some way. He had to—

  When the first cat fell onto his head from above he was so startled that he stumbled. Then, from the left came a dozen more, and from his right too many to count. He was swarmed, the cats knocking him one direction and then another, before he fell headlong over a d
rop-off next to the path and began rolling downward.

  He heard Michiko scream from above. “No!”

  Panic flooded his body as he tumbled and tried to breath; he was suffocating in warm fur, and what little air broke through was filled with dirt and debris from his fall.

  A fall like this was bad news for anyone, much less someone his age. His arms and legs crashed into tree branches on the way down, but each time the wood was rotten and broke off with no resistance. The branches had slowed his descent, however, and something else had too, an odd wave of air that had been generated below him that helped cushion his fall.

  He slowed and began to roll onto a soft area of rotting leaves, his body smashing into bushes and patches of weeds that exploded like ash. When he finally came to a stop, he waited for the pain to come. Certainly, he’d torn or broken something. But he was only greeted with some aches.

  Dirt, bile, pebbles, mud and gristle were stuck in his teeth. Dead cats were all around him, some crushed by the weight of his body as he’d descended. Many were still alive though, coming to and beginning to circle him, when a violent wave of white light came rolling down the hill, as if from an unseen ocean, and washed them away.

  As it washed over him, he was breathless again.

  Too much. Not gonna make it. Not—

  He felt someone pick him up with tenderness and care. It was Michiko. Using a strength that seemed beyond her size, she cradled him to herself and began running again, down a nearby groove in the mountain and then up, toward the path they had been on in the plush forest above. His head bobbed with each step as he wondered if the cats were still after them. For some reason, he felt that they weren’t.

  “Hold on, tomodachi!” Michiko said breathlessly as she ran. “Hold on!”

  His eyes grew heavy, and at first he welcomed the rest, but he forced them open—this was the last place you wanted to fall asleep. Because it was not a place that would allow you to ever be reawakened.

  He turned his head sideways and vomited over Michiko’s forearm. She didn’t seem to notice. Now that he could finally breathe a little, he tried to find something to focus on, so that he would not succumb to his deep urge to pass out.