The Parker Trilogy Read online

  In one of the corners, a camera with a red light was filming everything. Overhead there were two banks of fluorescent lights, one of them with a burnt-out tube. “I wasn’t drunk last night.”

  “Yeah. Maybe. But you weren’t sober, either.”

  Hector thought back for a moment. He, Bennie and Chico had drunk tequila in the car on the way to the club, hadn’t they? Quite a bit of it, actually. Yeah. They had. Then, when they’d arrived at The Mayan, Bennie had gotten them a round of shots and beers.

  Maybe he should have had a defense attorney here. The police had evidently been worried about things not sticking when they’d cut the interview off last night. Hector had been so depressed and overwhelmed that he’d hardly noticed. But, yeah. They had cut it short. Telling him they wanted him to get some rest and some other crap. This might be the opening he could use to get—

  That was when he noticed The Gray Man had reappeared; he was standing in the opposite corner, arms folded across his chest, his head down, as if staring at his feet. But he was listening. To every word. Hector knew it, but still . . . he had to ask. So, in his mind, he did.

  I don’t get to duck any of this, do I?

  The Gray Man shook his head.

  Why?

  True repentance requires a total willingness to take responsibility for your actions, said The Gray Man.

  Mm-hm. Is that all?

  No. After that, one must make amends as best one can. But one bridge at a time, Hector.

  “Great.”

  “Excuse me?” Houghton said.

  Hector had spoken aloud without realizing it. He replied with a shake of his head. “Nothing.”

  “So. Once again,” Chan said, this time leaning back in his chair a bit, “you care to tell us why you did what you did?”

  Hector couldn’t help himself. “Damn cops. Man. You’re all like snakes.”

  Houghton squirreled up his face. “How’s that?”

  “Everything you say is to trip me up. Shit. You think I was born yesterday? You think I’m some dumb-ass street punk?”

  “Nobody said that.”

  “No. Not directly. You just ask me leading questions that get me to admit my guilt right out of the gate! ‘Um. Mr. Villarosa. Would you care to tell us why you did what you did? So we can get you to say, on tape”—Hector paused and pointed up at the camera—“that you did do it in the first place?’ I mean, why not open up with, ‘Would you care to tell us what happened last night?’ Or maybe, ‘Hey, Hector, why were you at the club last night?’ But, no. Instead, it’s straight for the jugular.”

  Detective Chan glared at him with pure contempt. “Yeah. Just like with Marisol Alacante. Your girlfriend, right?”

  A pall fell over the room instantly. Houghton glanced at Chan disapprovingly before he looked back to Hector.

  It was too late. “That was a cheap shot, asshole,” Hector sneered.

  “No. Shooting a girl in the face from point-blank range is a cheap shot, tough guy.”

  Hector tried to stand but his hands were chained to a metal hoop in the middle of the table. Instead, he only made it halfway up before the cuffs dug into his wrists. Houghton stood up fully. Chan stayed seated.

  It was time to lawyer up. Zip it. End this little chat.

  In the corner, The Gray Man shook his head again, still looking at the ground.

  You want me to let these guys hang me? Is that what you’re saying? Hector thought at him.

  This time, The Gray Man raised his head. The look on his face made Hector sit right back down as a wave of remorse and sorrow came over him.

  No, Hector. I want you to do the right thing, that’s all.

  Hector shook his head in complete defeat. That look. It had brought visions to him, of pain and blood and sorrow. It brought the memory of Marisol’s horror, as her hands came up in fear, it brought the desperation in David Fonseca’s eyes, just before the bullet from Hector’s gun blew his brains out the back of his head.

  “You still with us, Hector?” Houghton asked softly.

  Hector smiled in frustration, then he lowered his head and said the words. “I did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “I shot my girlfriend first. She was cheating on me. Then I shot the bouncer.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was the one she was cheating with.”

  Chan took notes as Houghton sat back down and put his hands together on the table top. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. She did me wrong, they both cost me face.”

  “And that makes it okay?”

  The Gray Man unfolded his arms and put them in the pockets of his trousers.

  Silence followed, and to their credit, the detectives let it be. Then, finally, the remorse in Hector’s heart loosened his tongue. “No. It does not make it okay. It was wrong.” He looked up at Chan and then over to Houghton, locking eyes with him. “I committed murder. I went there to commit murder. It was premeditated. All the way. I wanted him dead. She . . . she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  This time the silence that followed was of the “stunned senseless” variety. Hector had just copped to a murder-one charge, on tape, and everyone knew it.

  “You meant to do it?” Chan finally said, evidently for insurance.

  “Yeah. You wanna ask again, maybe a different way this time?”

  “We just want—”

  “You want to make sure I’m saying what it sounds like I’m saying. I get it. So, let me repeat it all, but this time I’ll add a bonus.” This time, Hector looked up at the camera and repeated his confession, word for word.

  Over the next fifteen minutes they extracted every other piece of data they could from him. Hector gave them everything but Chico, Bennie and Burro—because they truly did not know what he was going to do, and that was that.

  He told them that he’d found out about everything and what he had planned. He told them not only the why, but the hows and whens. He knew they had his gun and he knew the bullets from the crime scene would match it.

  Again, incredibly, they asked if he wanted to speak to an attorney. Again, he declined. By now, their offer was a token thing. They had all they needed to put him up for the death penalty and everyone knew it.

  As the interview went on, Hector found it harder and harder to raise his head. Instead, he shamefully spoke to a dull scratch in the top of the table that was shaped like a lazy “s.” Not only his life, but his very existence was coming to a hard stop. No more Chinese food when he wanted it, or girls to chase. No more drinks with the homies or sleeping in on Sundays. Game over. No more gang. No more street life. And that was the worst of it.

  Because here was the thing about growing up on the street: it was the best place in the world to do your growing up. Because there, when they came at you with their knives or guns? It was mostly face-to-face. Like men. Not like all the white boys in their fancy suits downtown, or all those damned politicians in DC, who did all their stabbing from behind and all their killing with the courage of canaries.

  Hector shook his head sadly and they ended the interview, getting up and leaving him alone in the process. As he waited for the sheriff to take him back to his cell, he continued to avoid looking in the corner at The Gray Man, as he had during the entire rest of the questioning. He couldn’t handle those eyes again, boring into his soul.

  But after a few moments, he couldn’t take it anymore. He looked.

  The Gray Man was not there.

  Instead, he was standing right next to him, glowing softly, with one hand on Hector’s shoulder as he said only two words: “Well done.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Father Soltera watched as Michiko went from sitting cross-legged to standing in one fluid motion while drawing both her swords.

  “It’s okay,” Ikuro said softly. He lowered his violin and glanced wearily outside the cave. “They won’t come near the fire, and for some reason, they can’t come into the cave.

  “
How do you know that?” Father Soltera asked worriedly.

  A sad look came over the man’s face. “Because I’m an old fool. I fell asleep one night and the campfire burned out . . . I don’t know, sometimes I wonder if I didn’t do it on purpose. You know, just let it happen. Because it gets so lonely here. But when I awoke and saw the fire was down to embers, I immediately thought I was a dead man.” He looked over at the wolves. “But they stayed right there, on the other side of the threshold between the outside and the inside.”

  “So, what do we do?”

  “Wait until morning. They like the light of the sky—dull as it gets—even less than that of the campfire. They come and stand here almost every night, to stare, pace and growl. I sleep through it now, but my first few weeks here, I thought it would drive me mad.”

  Michiko still had not sheathed her swords. “Does anyone ever come with them?” she asked.

  “What? No.”

  “Then I guess we’re special,” she replied tensely.

  Stunned, Ikuro looked outside just as Father Soltera did. The smoke from the fire, mixed with the glowing eyes of the wolves, made it hard to focus at first. But the four in the middle of the pack had parted, three to one side, one to the other, to let someone through.

  It was a woman. She was naked, save for a leather pelt that was tied around her waist that fell to the middle of her thighs. Her elbows were tucked in, covering her breasts as she walked forward, her forearms extending both of her hands, which were cupped. In them she held a small metal sphere.

  She was young, perhaps in her mid-twenties, with sharp cheekbones and a slight chin. Her black hair was cut in bangs over her eyes and was mostly thick, save for an incredible mix of long, stringy strands, with patches like gossamer in places. But what was really stunning was what was trapped in her hair: at the top of her head and flitting about was a black dove with cracked wings, the feathers damaged in places for all its efforts. It pulled up, trying once more to escape. All in vain.

  Stranger still—and so bizarre that Father Soltera blinked hard, twice, to confirm what he was seeing—there was a black goldfish, with albino eyes and wide fins, moving delicately in and out of the dozens of strands of hair that fell across her face, in an eerily captivating dance. How? How was a goldfish swimming in the air?

  Now it was Ikuro’s turn to stand, and no sooner had he done so than he began to back further into the cave. “No! She’s never come this close before!” he said, panic gripping his voice.

  Too stunned to rise, Father Soltera scooted backwards in panic, away from the woman who emanated pure evil, just like The Brood Woman who’d come to visit him with all her children back in his apartment. Michiko, however, stepped forward and took up a defensive stance, her sword blades reflecting light from the fire.

  The Gossamer Lady smiled. As the wolves closed around her, she spoke, her voice clicking at the beginning and end of each sentence. “This old man . . . I know of. He’s been here a long time. Haven’t you?”

  “No, I haven’t! Leave me alone!” Ikuro cried out.

  She bared her teeth at him mockingly; her canine teeth were too long, like a vampire’s. “Oh, yes you have. Too much of a coward to live in the last world, just as much a coward to die in this one.”

  Father Soltera spoke up and surprised himself. “Leave him alone.”

  Her head turned slowly toward him, and Father Soltera immediately wished it hadn’t. He could actually feel her noticing him, getting to know him by reading his mind like Michiko could, but in a much different way. The feeling was a disgusting violation, but he couldn’t stop it. He felt like that bird stuck in the intertwined strands of her dirty, wet hair that struggled over and over, trying to escape only to wear itself out and collapse against her scalp.

  “Ahhhh,” she sighed, and the wolves around her began to yip. “This is why I’ve been summoned. For you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Father Soltera stammered as he finally managed to get up. From the corner of his eye he could see Ikuro, arms spread against the cave wall, his eyes now tightly closed.

  “A man of God? My, my, my. Here? In this place?” she said. “It’s incredible, really.”

  Michiko took two steps to her right, closer toward him. “Don’t talk to her,” she said firmly.

  Now, at last, The Gossamer Lady turned her attention to Michiko, and when she did the contempt in her face was so palpable that the goldfish began swimming frantically, it too now trying to escape. Without warning, The Gossamer Lady opened her hands, freeing the metal sphere, then giggled and covered her mouth.

  The sphere drove forward at Michiko with incredible speed, nearly smashing her in the face before she managed to deflect it with her tanto blade at the last second. It deflected to the left and came back at her, repeatedly, systematically driving her backwards.

  Evidently pleased that Michiko was now properly distracted, The Gossamer Lady turned her attention back to Father Soltera. “Hello, Man of God. Are you still with us?” she said as she lowered her arms, revealing her breasts.

  Father Soltera diverted his eyes. “What do you want?”

  “Oh. It’s not about what I want.” She laughed. Reaching up to cup her breasts in each hand, she added, “It’s about what you want.”

  This time, he closed his eyes.

  “Ah, ah, ah . . . Bernie,” she teased. But her voice had changed. It was Gabriella’s voice, and it obliterated him. He had to look. He couldn’t help himself. And when he did it was as if The Gossamer Lady had taken hold of his eyes so he couldn’t look away, even if he wanted to.

  “You really have a problem with resisting, don’t you, Bernie?”

  “Stop it!” Father Soltera said, trying not to remember how Gabriella would call him that. “Bernie.” Softly. Knowingly. Intimately.

  “No. This is what you want. It’s what you’ve always wanted,” she said sadly. “All you have to do is ask. Why didn’t you just ask? We could’ve been so happy together.”

  “Tomodachi!” Michiko yelled.

  But it was too late. He was tired of telling himself that he didn’t want her. Or deserve her. Or need her.

  So tired, in fact, that as he walked out of the cave, Father Soltera was even willing to pretend that it was really her, even though, deep down, he knew better.

  Maggie sat straight up on the couch and rubbed at her eyes. A small clock on the corner of the desk in front of her said it was just past 8 a.m. Looking at Kim severely, she said, “What do you mean she’s gone?”

  “When I did a bed check this morning? She wasn’t in her room.”

  “Could she be—”

  Kim cut her off, her face twisted in frustration. “Her bag’s gone too.”

  The moment sunk into Maggie like an anchor. “How did she get out?”

  “I asked Henry, our nighttime security guard. He said she was talking to him last night, in the lobby. She told him she couldn’t sleep. He found her out there reading a People magazine.”

  “And?”

  “He said she was standing right next to him when . . .”

  “When, what?”

  “When he set the alarm. The main keypad is in the lobby, right by the front door.”

  “Shit!” Maggie yelled as she stood and rubbed her fingers through her hair. Think, Maggie, think.

  Kim was beside herself. “This has never happened before. I mean, residents ask all the time to leave. But not like this. I’ve gotta call the director.”

  Maggie nodded, feeling detached from the very words she was about to say. All her hard work, to keep this away from the police and that creepy Hopkins, for nothing. “And, even though it appears like she’s left on her own, because she’s a minor, you’re going to have to call the police.”

  There was a knock at the door, causing both women to look up. In the doorway was a burly, middle-aged man with a cleft chin and a tight haircut. “Sorry to interrupt, Kim,” he said tensely, “but I checked the security footage.”

 
“Maggie, this is Henry. Henry, this is Luisa’s chaperone.”

  Henry’s face, already a road map of worry, now rerouted itself to a mask of guilt. He couldn’t even look Maggie in the eye as he gave her a curt nod.

  Maggie knew it was harsh, negative, even sexist thinking, but she couldn’t help herself. Men in a women’s shelter? It was a dumb idea. Almost as dumb as whatever explanation Henry gave himself for why Luisa would want to talk with him, alone, in a lobby with just the two of them, after dark.

  Most women who weren’t victims of domestic abuse would find such a scenario uncomfortable, at best. She glanced at the wedding ring on Henry’s finger. It didn’t matter. Luisa was a pretty young thing, maybe too young to think about like that, unless Henry was a perv. But to allow her to get close enough to him to see him set the alarm? He hadn’t been thinking clearly, that was for damn sure.

  “What’s it show?”

  “Just like we thought. She clipped the alarm code from me when we were talking last night. Lobby camera shows her sneaking out at just past midnight. Exterior cameras show a lowered black Nissan picking her up with the headlights off.”

  Please, Luisa. Please tell me that wasn’t Felix’s car. Please.

  But Luisa, being long gone by now, could tell Maggie no such thing.

  “Eddie and I backed up the camera footage to 4 p.m. All was well until just before 8 p.m., when she snuck into the checkroom and grabbed her bag.”

  “Dammit!” Kim whispered under her breath.

  Every shelter had a checkroom. Its practical use on most days was to store the residents’ bags, and more importantly, cell phones. For everyone’s safety, each resident had to surrender their phones. Calls could only be made by appointment, using the shelter landline, with a member of staff present.

  The same went with the shelter computers—outgoing emails were proofed by a member of the staff before they could be sent. Yeah. It sucked for privacy. But the protocol was strict, observed by almost every shelter, public or private, in the nation. Because when a woman finally made the move to escape? That’s when they were most vulnerable, and when a flammable situation could go nuclear.