The Parker Trilogy Read online

  “Now I get mostly silence. Been home a few days. We supposed to get together soon, but Mondo’s in Vegas and Jin’s off doing some job in Bakersfield. No big homecoming or anything, not that I give a shit. I’m done.”

  Bingo, Parker thought.

  “Okay. So, if you’re done, then help us out. Maybe we can help you out too,” Parker said softly.

  Yi looked at Parker suspiciously. “How?”

  “It’s hard for a felon to get a job, Eric. You know that,” Campos said.

  Parker was impressed. Campos was cutthroat.

  “And a word from a few detectives to wherever you apply might just help your cause, ya know?” Parker added.

  Yi scratched nervously at his nose and then his chin before he made his decision. “The old man was stocking more than cigarettes and booze, man. Got it? We ran some X through there for years, then the game switched up to heroin.”

  “Why was he helping?”

  Yi smiled. “Because he wanted to stay alive, man.” Then he shrugged and added, “And because we waived his protection fee.”

  Parker sighed softly, remembering the old man’s file. A Korean war vet, and they’d broken him down to this by the end of his life. “How’d it work?”

  “Shipments came in by delivery truck. Meth from some fake trailer park in the middle of the damn Mojave, where I don’t know, ’cause I never saw it. But the heroin? That’s coming straight from Bakersfield. Probably why Jin is there now.”

  “Is Vegas in play too?” Campos asked.

  “Nah. I don’t think so. Mondo’s just playing while we all work. Or they all work.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “Old man takes the shipments, hides them in back with his bread, booze and other shit until we rotate it out for distribution. When it’s cleared, the various players come by, pick up their cut and head out.”

  “He handle the cash?”

  Yi laughed. “Hellllll, no. Man. You kidding me? Shit.”

  Parker thought the reaction revealed a lot about what they were on to. “It was a lot of money?”

  “Shit. Twenty thousand a week. Easy.”

  Campos glanced quickly at Parker with a look that said the waters were starting to get deep. A million dollars a year out of a corner liquor store in the middle of Korea Town. It was mind boggling.

  Parker had to ask it, so he did. “So why do you think Hymie was a setup?”

  “Because he was too smart for his own good, that’s why.”

  “How?”

  “He liked Toolie. She’s one of our girls, ya know. Typical. He had a thing for Asian girls. But dummy, he falls in love or some shit. She’s, like, four years older than him, doesn’t care one bit about his ass, but it don’t matter. He gets the fever.”

  The pit bull had given up playing tough. It was now lying down with its chin on both its front paws, its big eye lids growing heavy as it fought the urge to take a doggy nap.

  Yi was on a roll now. “So, Hymie, he starts making promises.”

  The conversation was starting to develop an undertow. Parker saw Campos nod, ever so slightly, as if he knew what was coming. “Like?”

  “He knows where some of his gang hide their drugs. Maybe an easy score for us, if we want it. Now, he’s a stupid kid, ya know? Officially, formally? No way we do that. We got a relationship with La Marea, and they and the Mexican gangs have a truce to stay outta each other’s way, for everyone’s sake. But the kid’s got a big mouth, and man, ya know, there’s free agents every-damn-where. All it takes is one hoppity little street hood to jack a few kilos of coke from the Vatos’ warehouse and run off to Missouri with that shit and it’s an all-out war.”

  Campos nodded. “He’s telling Toolie all this?”

  “Yeah. At first. He’s in love, ya know? Trying to impress her. Then he gets a meet and greet with Mondo. Dumbass makes the same offer.”

  It was Parker’s turn. “What then?”

  “Shit. Mondo knows a lava ball when it falls in his lap. He reports it to his Marea boss. Not that he’d ever call him his boss, but he is. If Marea wanted to, they could wipe our crew out overnight. Anyways. Sure enough? The Marea boss gets in touch with the capo of this dumbass’ Vatos posse and tells him that, a) he’s got a rogue agent on his hands and, b) he’d better take care of it before shit gets out of hand.”

  “Do you know the name of the Marea boss?” Campos cut in. It was a risky question.

  Yi froze and looked away from them. “Nah, man. I don’t.” His voice said he was lying, his body language said he was lying, but it was a truth they were never going to get out of him, because they all knew that it was the one answer almost guaranteed to get him, his sister and his mom killed.

  Parker brought him back on point. “You said it was a setup?”

  “Sure as shit. That fool was sent there that night. Mondo put out the word to have a few of us across the street. Rumor has it that Jin was one of them.”

  “One of the triggermen?”

  “Yeah. That shows you how important the job was.”

  Campos grunted. “I don’t get it though. Why there? You coulda popped Hymie anywhere. You didn’t need to attract that kind of attention to the store.”

  “Yeah. Well. It’s complicated,” Yi replied, looking at the ground.

  “I got my GED, just like you,” Campos said firmly. “So try me.”

  Yi sighed and kicked at the ground a few times, then said, “The old man found God.”

  “What?”

  “He got diagnosed with a bad heart or some shit. So? He decides he has to turn over a new leaf. Dumbass wanted out of the arrangement.”

  Parker noticed Campos face go dark. “And?”

  “We told him that wasn’t an option. So, the old man threatened to blow the whistle.”

  “Are you telling me . . .”

  “It was all arranged. Hymie kills the old man for us . . .”

  “You guys kill Hymie for the Vatos?”

  Yi nodded and looked up, but didn’t look Campos in the eye. “Exactly. The night before it went down we pulled everything out of the store and moved it to a warehouse over behind Echo Park. The old man thought he’d won.”

  Parker was disgusted. “That’s just great.”

  Yi shrugged. “Then? Once it was done they treated that shit like Roswell, ya know? Told the old lady she was next if she opened her mouth. Beyond that? The car that was stolen earlier that day? The flat was real. But being parked there? That night? C’mon man. What’re the odds? That ain’t no coincidence.”

  Parker smiled sadly on the inside. What would Napoleon have said? There’s no such thing as coincidence.

  “And . . .”

  “They knew Hymie was coming, man. He was stupid. And he was a traitor.”

  The air shifted. Parker could guess the answer but he had to ask anyway. “So, who sent him?”

  “I already told you, man. His own damn gang.”

  Campos moved to clarify. “No. We mean, do you know the name of the person who sent him?”

  “Hell yeah. That, I do know. Caught the tail end of a conversation about it between Jin and Mondo one day. Some tragic, Hollywood-type shit right there, man.”

  “How so?”

  “Dude’s name is Hector. He’s Hymie’s cousin.”

  Chapter Five

  The Pioneer Club Meeting took nearly two full hours. By the time it was over, it had been decided that the same carnival ride vendor from last year would be retained to bring back the ever-popular Dead Drop and Wheel of Giggles as well as a few smaller roller coaster rides and the—hopefully not illegally named—Disney Princess ride.

  The beer booth count would remain at four, but it was decided that security would be increased this year due to a few drunken outsiders at last year’s carnival nearly starting a full-fledged brawl. It was also decided by the board that tickets would be sold in advance and parishioners would be asked only to invite guests that would behave responsibly.

  Father Soltera
wondered how beneficial a carnival, which was supposed to be all about outreach into the community to bring strangers in, really was when the guest list became restricted like this. It did not pass his notice that the cause of that restriction was alcohol, and he wondered if one evil was not begetting the other.

  Sitting now in his office, with a view of the courtyard outside, he munched on a tuna sandwich that Carol had brought for him, and washed it down with a Dr Pepper from the mini-fridge behind his desk.

  As the Father of his church, he had the final say on just about everything. But it was not lost on him that many of the major church donors were on the carnival board, and though they were devout, they could also be hardheaded. The carnival brought in nearly forty thousand dollars each year, and nearly every cent of it was put to good use, like the year-round after school programs to help tutor local students, and the annual Thanksgiving Homeless Dinner. It all fell under the heading “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The carnival had been a neighborhood institution for over forty years. Father Soltera imagined that some of his predecessors probably wrestled with the same issues and came to the same conclusion he had: a lot of good would be lost if the carnival was changed.

  Still. It tugged at his heart that some bad would remain if it wasn’t. Lord only knew how much.

  He took calls and a few meetings after lunch. One was with Mr. Holler, who had just lost his wife and was asking the same questions that no one could ever answer: why had she died when she did? What had her life really meant?

  Father Soltera had heard them all ask the “why”s and the “what”s, noticing that they either consciously or subconsciously avoided the “where”s and the “then”s. Those were the harder questions, because whereas the first two had to do with the human condition of life, the final two had to do with the spiritual.

  Because if you really believed in the “where” of heaven and the “then” of an afterlife? The need for the other answers disintegrated. You could still mourn. You had to. But it was a mourning absent despair, which was the true poison of death.

  The other meetings were with Mrs. Herrera, who had been laid off and now had to feed her mother and two kids on her swiftly disappearing savings, and Mrs. Perez, who had lost her son to one of the gangs, after losing her husband at fifty-four to heart disease.

  All of them, in one way, shape or form, wanted to know where God had gone in their lives.

  Father Soltera’s task was easy: remind them, repeatedly, that He hadn’t gone anywhere. He may be allowing the challenges, but he hadn’t caused them. He may be helping you through them, but by default, by His own rules, he can’t fight the fight for you. Your humanity was yours to live out, one painful, brutal, useful, educational step at a time.

  It was a quarter past four when he finished some paperwork and told Carol he was going to take a walk down to the corner market for some pork chicharrones and a beer. She laughed hard at him. “Oh,” he said, pretending to be coy, “did I say beer? I meant to say root beer.” He left the office with her shaking her head at him.

  Exiting the side door, he realized there was a bit of nip in the air today. Gray clouds for a week, more clouds and rain in the forecast for the week ahead. LA playing the role of a rainy city was an odd thing, and though the cold caused his bones to ache, it also added a bit of freshness to the air.

  He made his way down the sidewalk, the market being only a few blocks away, and waved at some kids coming home from school, one boy on a razor scooter, the other boy on his bike. Fifth graders. Smiling. Laughing. Just beginning to figure out that the neighborhood they played in each day was teeming with danger.

  Father Soltera thought of Mrs. Perez again. Her son drinking and swearing, wearing his pants low and even changing his dialogue, all in an attempt to fit in and stay alive. That’s all it was: disguise by necessity. He’d just started seventh grade.

  He waved at a few folks in their yards, pulling weeds or moving their trash cans to the curb, and sighed.

  It was all just getting heavier and heavier. But that was okay. The Lord would be taking him home someday, and he was okay with that. The “why”s, “what”s, “where”s and “when”s meant nothing to him now.

  “Get by faith and get through the day!” he murmured to himself. Words of wisdom from one of his teachers in seminary, long ago.

  At the market, he stepped aside for a few men leaving with bags of vegetables and meats. They hadn’t seen him and apologized before making their way to the dilapidated old lunch truck in the parking lot with the words “Tacos, Tacos, Tortas!” painted crudely on the side.

  It was while he was inside, sifting through the fresh chicharrones with a pair of tongs and placing the crunchiest looking pieces into a clear plastic bag, that he felt someone nearby. Looking up, he saw a man in his mid-thirties, Latino, but with very light skin, as if he were perhaps from Guadalajara. He wore a fitted navy-blue suit, his jet-black hair was greased straight back and his eyes were centered between very prominent cheekbones.

  As he approached, he appeared to be studying Father Soltera as well. Then he nodded. “Father.”

  It was a statement, not a question. An expected greeting due to Father Soltera’s clerical collar. But the usual reverence, feigned or otherwise, by which most people approached him was absent from this man’s demeanor. “Yes?”

  “Hello. My name is Guero. Guero Martinez.”

  “I don’t believe we’ve ever met. Do you go to my church?”

  The man chuckled, but it was an empty sort of laugh, like a hallow drum. “Oh. No. I don’t do church.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I’ve never seen the need for God.” He smiled, causing a chill to run up Father Soltera’s neck. “He just ruins all the fun.”

  Filipe, the store clerk who always asked for prayers and saved Father Soltera all the red Skittles from the candy dispenser by the door, stood at the counter looking very uneasy. He glanced nervously over at the two of them, then to another man in dress slacks and a dress shirt who was standing nearby watching the door.

  “I-I’m sorry to hear that,” Father Soltera replied, displeased with the shake in his voice.

  “Is’a-right,” Guero said with an exaggerated accent. “Is not what I’m here for anyway, you know, to debate false Gods and stupid prayers by desperate people, blah, blah.”

  Father Soltera put down his bag and tongs, cleared his throat and faced the man straight on. He’d been doing this too many years to forget the basics. Tweekers, gangsters, thugs . . . the one thing you could never do was show them your back. It was a sign of submission. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I will pray for you.”

  If hate could wear a face and stare at you, then surely it was the face of Guero Martinez as he looked at Father Soltera after he uttered these words. “I don’t want your prayers, old man. I want a name. Now.”

  Filipe, bless his heart, made a move towards his cell phone, which was on the edge of the counter. The man in the slacks and dress shirt motioned for him to rethink that, and Filipe took a step back.

  “And what name would that be?”

  “The man who knocked up my niece . . . Padre,” Guero said, practically spitting the last word.

  It took a second for Father Soltera to dial in on what he was getting at. Still. He said nothing in reply.

  “You know my niece, don’t you, Padre? Luisa?”

  “Son—”

  “Don’t call me that!” Guero half shouted, taking a menacing step forwards.

  Father Soltera gasped and, despite himself, took two steps backwards. He knew it was madness, but he could’ve sworn that the man’s eyes had just glossed over into solid, black orbs.

  Guero Martinez grinned, revealing silver pointed caps on each of his incisors. “You wanna talk to Jesus about this for a moment, Padre?”

  “I cannot tell you anything,” Father Soltera insisted.

  “She came to see you today. Earlier this morning. She was in there a long time. I know sh
e talked. Who is it?”

  Father Soltera simply shook his head.

  Guero stepped forwards again. To his shock, Father Soltera did not budge, even though a cloud of evil engulfed him that was so thick it was hard to breathe. Still, he managed to say, “I’m sorry, but I cannot tell you anything.”

  “Oh. Yes, you can. And you will.” This time his eyes left no room for doubt. They went from dark brown to pure black and stayed that way.

  Father Soltera’s voice was all stutters. “A-a-a p-person’s c-c-confessions . . . they’re s-sacred.”

  “Unless, of course, they’re from someone who makes you have unsacred thoughts,” Guero said, the grin holding on his face like a groom’s at a never-ending reception.

  Father Soltera listened to his soul, and his soul told him to close his eyes.

  “Too late for that, Padre. I already know about her,” Guero said, his lips inches now from Father Soltera’s right ear. “I have a friend who’s been watching you. She talks to me about the woman in your mind. She’s very pretty, right? But she wasn’t as a child. Back then, she was so skinny that they used to call her Olive Oyl, isn’t that right?”

  Father Soltera felt his mind go numb and his jaw drop. “I-I-have to leave now . . .”

  “But her eyes, Father! My friend tells me that they were so big that they swallowed the moon. Amazing. Not very many men, especially men of God, could say no to a woman like that. Did you, Father? Say no, I mean?” he mocked.

  The room went quiet. He couldn’t hear Filipe or the other man up front. He couldn’t hear any traffic outside or the sound of the Lotto display with its occasional ring when another million dollars fell into place. All those poor people, gambling their money away against one-in-a-million odds.

  “I-I have nothing to say to you. Please leave me alone.”

  When Guero spoke next it was with a menacing tone. “Okay, old man. You stay silent. I’m just gonna start killing people until I find out. And when I do? That blood will be on your hands.”

  In shock, Father Soltera opened his eyes and the horror before him was a beast in man’s clothing, his face that of a scorched gorilla with protruding teeth and floppy lips. Only for a split second though, an infinitesimally short moment, before it blinked back to Guero’s high cheekbones and shiny dental work.