The Parker Trilogy Page 43

  He thought of the word that Maggie had sent him: selah.

  He blinked. A Hebrew word. Yes. A Bible word. Occurring frequently at the end of multiple verses in The Book of Psalms. A word with no provable meaning. It was—

  “Tomodachi? Are you okay?”

  He nodded up at her as she glanced down at him with her dark eyes. She had a soft face, and from this angle he could see that she had a tiny mole just beneath her chin.

  “Okay,” she said with a grim smile. “We’re almost there. Almost to the forest, okay?”

  Her words echoed from far away. He nodded again.

  “When we get there, I will give you medicine. You will be well. Hold on.” And then he could feel her running even faster. The look on her face said that she knew he was lying. He wasn’t doing okay at all. The air of this place that had muted his voice still coated the inside of his mouth and was poisoning him.

  He forced his attention back to the Bible word.

  Selah was a word with no provable meaning. It was often thought to be a musical direction for a song break, as many of the Psalms were meant to be sung, like lyrics from God. Father Soltera believed that in some places this was most likely the correct interpretation. But most of the time, he felt its true meaning was rooted in a direction to understanding. As in taking a pause to reflect.

  “As in,” he muttered weakly, finally able to speak a little. “Pause and think of that.”

  Michiko paid him no notice. He smiled weakly. It truly was a fascinating word. Because it could also mean “forever.”

  It wasn’t until they reached the edge of the lush forest and Michiko laid him in a patch of tall, green grass that tickled his cheeks, that he grimly remembered yet another possible meaning.

  Selah, as in “a word used to determine weight or measure.”

  In that case, it had only one definition.

  To hang.

  Maggie was halfway to Eighth and Figueroa when her cell phone rang. She punched the answer button on her steering wheel and then recoiled at the sound of Tonya’s voice, strained and panicked, as she shouted through the car speakers. “Maggie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m almost there. Why? What’s wrong?”

  Tonya spoke four words that everyone at the shelter had been trained to treat with dead seriousness. “We’ve had a breach.”

  Maggie’s heart sunk. No!

  She eased off the gas, stunned. “What happened?”

  “Four men showed up. They beat the security guard in back, badly, and then got in through one of the delivery bays when a food bank truck arrived.”

  “What?”

  “They were Latino. We’re assuming they were gang members because one of them was Felix. Luisa identified him.”

  “Where’s Luisa now?” Maggie asked and then held her breath for the answer.

  “She’s with me. We escaped through the pantry door next to the kitchen, then made our way down the alley to the parking lot.”

  Maggie felt faint with relief but immediately punched the gas and split across two lanes of traffic, intent on beating the light ahead that was just changing from green to yellow. “Okay. So, procedurally, do we still meet?”

  “Yes, for the most part. But Irene and Cathy both knew of Eighth and Fig and the planned transfer location, which was supposed to be the shelter in Anaheim. We have to assume that they may have been intimidated into talking. They’ll give up the information because they have to protect all the other residents, you know that, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But they also both know that we’ll change everything up now, regardless. So, here’s the plan. It’s a two-person loop right now, you and me only, got it?”

  “Got it.” Maggie beat the light and then wove her way around a dump truck. Up ahead was a white Prius and a motorcyclist, but they were moving at a good speed so she kept pace behind them. The streets were damp, and pedestrians were scattered on the sidewalks.

  “Fourth and Broadway. There’s a small corner lot, catercorner from the Federal building. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Okay. I should be there in ten.”

  “By the time you get here, I will have arranged an emergency landing place for her. I’ll call the police, too, in case they want us to take her to a substation instead, and—”

  “No!” Maggie shouted, instantly regretting it but knowing she had no choice. She thought of Hopkins’ sneer when he’d said he already knew where Luisa was. “Look. Tonya. This is gonna sound crazy, but you’ve gotta trust me. Please. Am I on speakerphone?”

  “No. I disconnected the Bluetooth before I called you.”

  Maggie sighed. It was obvious that they were both trying to protect Luisa from at least one half of this conversation. That was good.

  “Okay. Listen to me. I think I know how this happened. One of the detectives that met me at the hospital when I went to see Father Soltera?”

  Tonya sounded confused. “Yeah?”

  “There was something off about him.”

  “Off? How?”

  “He seemed way more interested in finding out where Luisa was than he was about getting the details about what happened to Father Soltera or how to catch who did it.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s what I was wondering. At first I thought it was just his way of getting background on who might’ve wanted to hurt the Father.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “But knowing Luisa’s physical whereabouts has nothing to do with that, don’t you think?” Maggie asked, then feeling that Tonya might need an extra push, she added, “He was sloppy, too, about being too pushy about it. He even seemed to throw off his partner a few times. Now? This situation? Something’s wrong.”

  Tonya sighed heavily. “Okay. Well, I don’t know about all that, but the cops have already been called to the shelter. At some point we’re gonna have to talk with them and we’re obligated to inform Luisa’s mother, too.”

  Maggie came down Sixth Street and made her way to Broadway, where she made a left. Traffic was getting thicker. “I know. But maybe we wait and get the local police near the next shelter involved, once we get her there, just to be—”

  “I agree. For now, let’s not rush things.”

  “Two-person loop.”

  “Exactly. You come get her, I’ll give you the location of the new shelter, then I’ll notify that location that you’re coming. I’ll talk to Mark next. He reps the board and he’ll tell me how we can keep a lid on this without breaking any laws. Got it?”

  “Yeah. Okay. Do you think they’ll go for it?”

  “The board? I dunno. But, shit, Maggie? I’ve been there twelve years and we’ve never been attacked like that. It was insanity. They were shooting holes in the damned ceiling. And . . .” Tonya hesitated and, weakly, in the background, Maggie heard Luisa’s voice say, “It’s okay. Tell her.”

  “Tell me what?” Maggie asked.

  “They were moving from room to room, slapping and hitting people . . . One of the girls tried to fight back and she was punched in the face . . . and they were screaming Luisa’s name.”

  Stuck momentarily at a red light, Maggie closed her eyes. One of the girls tried to fight back. Of course she did. They all came to us for safety and this happens. My God.

  “That’s how we knew to escape. Luisa grabbed her backpack and we barely got out.”

  The light turned green and Maggie accelerated so fast that her tires chirped against the asphalt. “Okay. I’m almost there.”

  “We just parked. Center of the lot. I tipped the attendant and told him we were waiting for a friend.”

  The phone clicked off.

  Maggie’s mind began to scramble. She couldn’t believe this was happening. To Luisa, yes, but if she were honest, even if it was a selfish thought, Maggie couldn’t believe it was happening again to her. It was almost too much. First, Michael. Now, this. How many damn maniacs was she going to have to d
eal with in her life?

  A few minutes of traffic later and the parking lot on Fourth and Broadway was in sight. It was crowded with morning parkers all arriving for work, no doubt exactly as Tonya had hoped it would be. Maggie pulled in and saw Tonya’s car backed in right next to the booth.

  She pulled up across the front of it and watched as Tonya waved off the attendant and Luisa got out the passenger side. They both ran to Maggie’s car.

  Luisa crawled into the front seat, tears still wet on her cheeks, shock and fear dancing in her eyes.

  Tonya came around the car to Maggie’s window, leaned in and said one word. “Lomita.”

  “Blue building. By the docks, right?”

  “You went there for sensitivity training with Bianca.”

  “Got it,” Maggie said. Then looking at Tonya, she said, “You gonna be okay?”

  Tonya smiled faintly. “Yeah. I’ll call my husband now, then head back to the shelter. What was that detective’s name, the one you had a problem with?”

  “Hopkins.”

  Tonya nodded. “Okay. Get out of here.”

  Maggie nodded and pulled out of the lot and headed for the 110 Freeway. Luisa was whimpering softly as she stared out the passenger window.

  Ten minutes later, as they made their way through traffic, her cell phone rang. She looked down to see that it was a 213 number. Ominously, the caller ID said “LAPD.”

  She had no way of knowing who it was but something in her core told her that it was Hopkins. She slid her display button to ignore the call and then, thinking twice, she turned the phone off entirely. After strumming her fingers on the steering wheel a few times, she decided to take it a step further. Grabbing the phone again, she pulled off the back plate and popped out the battery. It was one of the things that led her to choose a Galaxy over an iPhone, this one simple act that could make sure you couldn’t be followed.

  Because old habits, and paranoias, died hard.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Parker marveled his way through the rest of Agent Clopton’s breakdown of just how bad a human being Güero Martinez really was. With an inner circle of only four men, his right-hand man was an ex-boxer nicknamed El Puno, who did most of his enforcing. An older man named Tito handled the drug distribution side of Güero’s enterprise, but that was mostly there as a screen for the sex trafficker’s version of a food buffet, which was overseen by Güero personally with the help of two runners, one nicknamed Flaco and the other El Loro.

  “I never took Spanish,” Parker interrupted.

  Murillo smiled. “El Puno means The Fist, Flaco means Skinny Guy and El Loro means The Parrot.”

  “And Tito just means Tito, I hope?”

  Murillo nodded as Clopton sighed and continued.

  “Güero has set up twelve locations so far, from San Diego to Sacramento, mostly in low-profile buildings or warehouses. The ‘price-based’ locations are tucked away in commercial sections of major metropolitan areas, where the businessmen with deep wallets can conveniently get to them. By default? They got the ‘fresh women’, new to the trade. Often, the buildings are either divided internally, or by floor, with women of different races. Currently, that means ‘Latinas’ from Mexico, Central and South America, ‘Asians’ from Japan, Korea and Thailand,; and— demanding top price these days—‘Persians’ pulled mostly from ravaged villages throughout Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon.”

  Parker squirmed in his chair at this last bit. He’d avoided the underground brothels in-country during the war, not because he was honorable, but because he found the risk of catching a bullet in the head while off base too high.

  Clopton took a break speaking and Agent Sharma stepped in. “The ‘price-based’ locations net more profit per client, but then there are the ‘volume-based’ locations, which are solid earners, too. With a ten-dollar cover price at the door, they are in the poorest neighborhoods and staffed with the women who have ‘aged-out’”—she paused and used her fingers to add quotation marks to these last two words—“from the various other locations. Services run from as low as twenty dollars to a max of one hundred dollars.”

  “As compared to?” Captain Holland asked after clearing his throat.

  “A fifty dollar cover at the pricier locales, $100–1,500 for additional services.”

  “Do we even dare ask what the services are?” Klink mumbled.

  “Damnit, Klink.” Murillo shook his head. “Did you have to go there?”

  Clopton didn’t miss a beat. “Let’s just say it’s all the stuff you could imagine and more. That’s the adult women. We haven’t gleaned enough yet to learn what they’re doing to the minors, but we suspect it’s even worse.”

  “Unbelievable,” Holland grunted.

  “The women are forced to live on-site or in rented homes nearby, which have barred doors and covered windows. They’re kept under guard at all times,” Agent Sharma said, “and there are senior women in the groups that are allowed to refuse certain services if they help keep the rest in line.”

  Murillo’s face pulled back in shock. “What? They rat each other out?”

  “Sadly, the survival instinct brings out the worst in people, Detective Murillo. Regardless,” Agent Sharma said with a sigh, “the ‘ratting out’, as you call it, rarely has to happen. These women have little or no chance of escape, and even if they did escape, they’d most likely do so with little or no money, in a foreign land where they don’t speak the language or have the slightest idea where to go to for help.”

  “So, they stay put?” Klink asked.

  Parker had had enough. “More instinct, Klink. Herd mentality, this time. You combine the herd mentality with a strong survival instinct? You have a brutally dangerous combination.”

  “Like what?” Klink asked.

  “Like buffalo following each other over the edge of a cliff, that’s what.”

  Clopton looked over at Parker, and as she did he noticed she was suddenly looking at him differently. “That’s right, Detective Parker, and that’s why it’s up to us to save them.”

  Again, Parker had to fight off the urge to tell them all that Güero had called him just before he’d gotten there. Why? It made all the sense in the world to say something, but it was almost as if an outside force was pressuring him not to.

  The conference room was illuminated in dull florescent light. Parker noticed that the conference table was newly polished and shiny, their various reports and note pages like paper islands on a glossy wooden sea. But what really caught his eye was Clopton’s cell phone; the screen went from pale green to bright red. Maybe her battery was running out.

  “We’re going to save them?” Parker shot the captain a confused look. “I was assuming we would step back and let the Feds do their thing.”

  Captain Holland looked at Clopton. “And I was assuming the same thing.”

  “No. We need you guys in on this. It’s just too big, with too many local players. And, besides, you’ve stepped in the shit now, so by default? You get to help us clean it up.”

  “I mean, I don’t get it,” Parker pushed. “Why didn’t the mayor know about this investigation, or the DA’s office? Hell. How about just telling the Gang Unit guys so that we wouldn’t have stepped in the shit in the first place?”

  The two agents looked at each other grimly before Clopton finally spoke up. “Two reasons, really. One, this involves La Marea, the largest gang in the United States right now. We have agents in the field working this from coast to coast, as well as agents with the DEA, ATF and Customs.”

  Parker didn’t like the way she was saying things slowly, as if she were stalling, so he pressed. “And two?”

  “And two, we’re afraid they’ve got some people on the inside.”

  Captain Holland looked confused. “Inside where? The Bureau?”

  “Well, anything’s possible,” Agent Clopton replied, “but I was specifically thinking about the LAPD.” Again, she paused, then she spat it out. “Within your station.”
>
  Parker’s heart sank. Shit. I should’ve told them Güero called me before this little revelation. Now if I do, it’s going to look suspicious.

  During the war they would call any moment of inconvenient reality a “truth moment.” That could mean the moment when you saw that your position in combat was compromised, or a moment when one of the tribal leaders gave you five minutes to leave town because a greenhorn private had run his Humvee over five of his sheep. Whichever, a truth moment meant that the conversation or situation could go either way.

  As Captain Holland stood up and put his hands on his hips, Parker grimaced. This was going to get ugly.

  “What the hell do you mean by ‘this station’?” he growled.

  To her credit, despite her hesitation at saying the words a moment ago, Clopton now seemed determined and nonplussed. “I mean exactly what it sounds like, Captain. You’ve got someone dirty in your ranks. We haven’t identified him yet, but we’re getting close.”

  Murillo asked the obvious question before anyone else could. “And how do you know he’s not one of us?”

  Amazingly, Clopton pointed at her phone. “Because Quantico says it’s not.”

  A stunned, confused looked passed its way from Murillo to Klink and to the captain.

  But Parker simply shook his head. He’d seen this type of technology used countless times in the military. “Voice recognition analysis,” he said flatly. Then he glared at Clopton. “In a damned civilian setting?”

  “Changing times,” Clopton replied coldly, but her face said she felt his offense and maybe even sympathized with it.

  “You mean,” Klink said, leaning forward with a scowl. “You recorded our voices and—”

  “We have the mole on tape. From a meeting some time back that we were able to bug. But he was in a room with a lot of other people. The background noise was too much, so most of it is garbled so we had to—”

  “Match us against partials,” Parker said, cutting her off. Then he looked at Klink. “They took the words that were clear in the tape, ran it through software that could get a verbal fingerprint for consonants and vowels, then pieced together a mapping profile to match against us.” But even as he explained it all, he was wondering how he’d passed the test. If they were recording Güero’s calls, and maybe even analyzing them in real time, wasn’t it possible that they had Parker’s voice on tape from the conversation he and Güero just had?