The Parker Trilogy Page 57

  Felix smiled. The men to Maggie’s left laughed.

  But Luisa was crying. “Maggie . . . no. Leave. Now. While you still can,” she squeaked, her voice saturated with desperation. “Please!”

  “It’s already too late for that,” one of the men to her left said. Maggie looked over at him and was shocked. There was something really . . . off about him. His appearance was rapidly vibrating, his frame and face coming and going in staggered images. At first, she wondered if something was wrong with her. Was she having a fainting spell or something? No. She wasn’t. Focusing hard, she was finally able to lock him down.

  She wished she hadn’t. He had tan skin and black hair that was going gray around the ears, and looked to be in his mid-fifties. His blue shirt was unbuttoned underneath the white suit he was wearing, and he was looking at Maggie the way all the perverts looked at you, like they were having sex with you in their heads—but it was worse that. Her revulsion at his gaze was instant, because she realized he had eyes that saw females like her grandfather once saw females. Like nothing but prey.

  “No!” Luisa screamed as she resumed her struggle to break free. “Felix! Let me go! Now!”

  “Listen. I’m only here to help her. What you’ve done?” She looked at Felix. “Attacking the shelter in LA? All this? It can still be made right.”

  Felix smirked at her. “What?”

  Maggie had deliberately not mentioned what he’d done to Father Soltera or the many death threats he’d made to people, both of which would be much harder to make right without doing some hard time, which would be unwise to bring up right now as it would only make him more desperate to get away.

  “Listen to this puta, boss!” Felix laughed. “Can you believe her?”

  The creature in the white suit, because that’s how Maggie saw him now, as something less than a man, smiled. “This is what happens when you let a woman think she’s in charge of stuff. Look at her. Look at her face, amigos! Such confidence. Even now, as outnumbered as she is. Why are you so confident, señorita?”

  He motioned his head to the men around him and the four of them began to advance toward her.

  Maggie sighed. So much for stalling.

  “Run, Maggie!” Luisa yelled.

  But Maggie had no intention of running anywhere. The odds were long, but when, really, hadn’t they been? She reached through the window, pulled out her Eskrima sticks, held one in each hand and immediately assumed a defensive pose.

  “Oh, oh, ohhhh!” the man in the white suit yelled. “This one’s a fighter!”

  Two to her left, two to her right. All smiling at her.

  Good, Maggie thought. Keep disrespecting me. After all, I’m just a girl, right?

  As long as they kept thinking that way? It’d be an insult to their manhoods to pull their guns. And she was sure, by looking at them, that they were the type of characters who had guns.

  They were all wearing suits, which was dumb. They should’ve at least taken off their jackets for more range of motion. The first two learned this very quickly, when they came in tight together and made easy targets. She spun on the balls of her feet and jabbed one of the Eskrima sticks hard into the left eye socket of one of the guys. He crumpled to the ground instantly, grabbing at his face.

  Maggie sneered. One down. Three to go. Remember your training: one stick is a sword, the other a shield.

  The second man came in and swung wildly. She side stepped him, deflecting his fist outward with her left stick, then rotated the Eskrima stick in her right hand like a band baton and spun it downward, catching him flush on his left knee cap before she snapped it upward into his chin, where it cracked loudly. He went down faster than his partner and lay cursing loudly on the ground.

  The two to her right had split up and were moving in for their turn when the man in white whistled. Luisa, who had grown still in Felix’s arms as the fight broke out, now glanced worriedly at Maggie.

  The man in white said one word that dripped with contempt. “Enough.”

  Instantly the two men to her right stepped back and pulled their guns.

  No! Maggie thought. I should’ve made the fight last longer, should’ve given them a few free punches, ran around a bit, something, anything to buy more time.

  “Drop them,” one of the men to her right said. “Now!”

  Biting at the inside of her cheek in frustration, Maggie threw the Eskrima sticks down.

  “No! Leave her alone,” Luisa cried out before, much to Maggie’s horror, Felix picked her up and slammed her hard against the car. Tears spilled down her cheek as blood began to dribble from her lower lip.

  Maggie made a step toward her but was cut off by the tallest of the two men to her right, who put his gun directly against her forehead. Frozen, she stood in place as the other man holstered his gun and pulled a zip tie from his pocket, which he used to secure her hands behind her back.

  The man in white slowly walked over to her.

  She felt nauseated as he looked her up and down, very slowly, and drank her in with his creepy eyes. Finally, he held her gaze and smiled. “My, aren’t you special.”

  Maggie said nothing in reply. Instead she diverted her eyes to look past him.

  In response, he grabbed her chin violently and forced her to look back at him. “Don’t you ever look away from me, understand? I’m gonna teach you respect, girl, the good old-fashioned way. Me. You. Under the sheets. A little tequila. Your hands still tied up. I. Can’t. Wait.”

  “The hell you will,” Maggie said, staring him in the eye. Then, for good measure, she spat on him.

  His eyes blazed, for just a second, before he pulled a pocket square from his suit and dabbed the spit off his cheek. “Ahhh . . . yessssss. You are a feisty one, for sure. Okay. But remember what you just did, when . . .”

  “When, what?” Maggie said.

  “When I’m doing things to you that will make you hate yourself forever.”

  Luisa was sobbing now. “No. No. No. No.”

  “What was your name again, feisty girl? Oh. Yes. Our little Luisa here called you Maggie. That’s right. Do you wanna know my name?”

  Maggie shrugged defiantly, but inside she was beginning to come undone.

  “It’s Güero. Güero Martinez.”

  Maggie shrugged. “Good for you. You want an Oscar now for Best Leading Douchebag?”

  Güero smiled, but pure hate suddenly darkened his eyes. He did not break his gaze with Maggie as he spoke. “Felix? You know where we’re going with Luisa, correct?”

  Felix tilted his chin up. “Yeah, boss.”

  “Good,” Güero replied. He looked back at the Escalade as one of the windows rolled down and the driver leaned his head out and yelled, “Jefe?”

  “Yeah, Tito?”

  “Police scanner says they’re on their way.”

  “Okay then. I’ve gotta special call to make anyway. Vamanos! Raul, you take blondie’s cute little car. Get it over to Monterey Park, chopped up and disappeared.”

  Maggie cursed herself for leaving the keys in the ignition as the thug she had jabbed in eye got up off the ground, still wincing and blinking his eyelid in pain. “Yes, boss.”

  Luisa tried screaming again but Felix slapped her once, then a second time. His hand was just balling into a fist for a third shot when Maggie struggled to get at him and was yanked violently backwards, against the chest of the guy who had zip-tied her. Luisa put her hands up meekly, to signal her compliance, and got into the car.

  Maggie recoiled as Güero suddenly reached out his hand and ran his fingers over her cheek, his thumb coming to a gentle rest on her lips. “So pretty,” he said. “You are absolutely gorgeous.”

  Maggie pulled her chin to the side to avoid his touch, but his hand simply followed her face. His eyes bore into hers again as he added, “You are going to fetch top dollar, you know that? I mean. Wow. Top. Dollar.”

  Then he turned and walked to the Mercedes as a hand came over Maggie’s mouth, stuffing it with
a rag, and she was dragged, kicking and screaming, to the Escalade.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Feeling bad for leaving work, but feeling useless, Parker continued to convince himself that a workout would do him good. Maybe on the treadmill or between sets he could figure out a way to either take a leave of absence or convince Trudy, once and for all, that he didn’t need one. Already, though, he was leaning toward the leave, because－truth be told? He’d rather lose the job than her.

  He was making his way down the walkway to the parking garage when his cell phone rang. He answered it.

  “Hello, Detective Parker.”

  It was Güero Martinez. Again.

  Parker froze mid-step in his walk to his car. “What do you want?”

  “Oh. I dunno. I’m having one of those days, you know? Just being productive. Just checking things off my list. And, well, since it seems like we’re in this together, I figured it was time.”

  “In this together?” Parker replied, perplexed.

  “Yeah. We both have . . . mutual associates, I guess.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Güero chuckled into the phone. “Hell? That’s a topic for another day, but you’ve evidently decided not to listen, Detective Parker.”

  A girl ran by in a blue hoodie, gnashing on a pretzel as she made her way to a Lyft car down the sidewalk. Parker pinched up his face. “Listen to what? You?”

  “Yes. Exactly. Instead, you’ve gone along with your old friend . . . and started digging for bones that are better left buried. But here’s the thing, Detective—I have friends too. As you’re about to find out.”

  The rain was starting to fall harder, so Parker began making his way to his car again. “Look, I don’t know what—”

  Güero continued to get cute. “Ya know, I have to admit, I was surprised that you didn’t back off. I mean, with your past? You’ve got more demons to deal with than me, señor.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Iiiiiii dunnno . . .”

  Parker had had enough. “Listen, asshole. I don’t know what you’re up to here but—”

  “I already told you what I’m up to. It’s a game. All of it. Life. Death. Here. There. And like any game? There are losers. As you’re about to find out.”

  “Was that a threat?”

  Güero’s voice had changed, the playfulness gone and replaced by a biting seriousness. “Oh, that was the utter definition of a threat, yes.”

  “You know what threatening a peace officer can get you?”

  Then, incredibly, Güero laughed. Loud and hard. “You? A peace officer? As in an officer of the peace?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I—”

  “I thought we’d already covered all of this. But, okay. Tell me again how many people you killed over there, Detective—in the desert, I mean?”

  Parker squinted at the Reserved sign over his parking space. “How could you possibly know—”

  “How many? Because they speak to me, Detective Parker. They do. My Ladies of the Dark bring them to me in their incantations and they whisper to me, beg me really, to hear what you did to them.”

  “You’re insane”

  “And not just the men you killed, oh no, but the women and children too.”

  “I never killed any women or children?”

  “Really? Tell me again, Detective, how many air strikes you called in on some of your missions? How many children did you help blow to pieces, soldier boy?”

  Fear began to grip at Parker. How? Outside of all this crazy talk about hell and speaking to the dead, how did Güero Martinez know these things? “Did you pull my file or something, you sick mother—”

  A big, long, angry sigh filled Parker’s ear. “I told you already, Detective. Your side has its way of knowing things. So does mine.”

  “Quit talking in riddles!”

  “Fine. Your dead friend that’s come back to help you, who’s drafted you to the side of eternal unhappiness, of all the do-gooders and glory-glories?”

  “Napoleon?”

  “That’s right. There’s that side and my side.”

  Parker shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about man, this is nuts.”

  “Ah, Detective Parker. You’ve heard the saying, haven’t you, that ‘no one is blinder than he who will not see’?”

  “Yeah. I’ve heard it.”

  “And yet still . . . still, still, still . . . you go on about—”

  “Fine. Okay. You work for the devil or some shit, is that it?” Parker seethed. He expected to be embarrassed at saying such a thing, but he wasn’t. Instead, he felt liberated.

  “Ah,” Güero said with another chuckle. “No one works for him, Detective. We’re all happy, willing volunteers.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And the rewards are fantastic. I mean, just last night? I had two women, both virgins from Kazakhstan. It was amazing!”

  “You’re a sick bastard, you know that? Okay. You wanna call me out like this? Fine. But you’re going to regret it.”

  “Now that’s where you’re wrong, Detective. Some might even say ‘dead wrong.’” Another laugh.

  He was getting cockier as the conversation went on. A sudden bout of paranoia came over Parker and he looked around the car. Was this guy crazy enough to try and gun him down on department grounds?

  He already had Hopkins on his payroll. Who knew if he had anyone else too. Like the uniformed officer exiting the parking garage elevator right now to the left or the guy in a suit walking down the driveway.

  Parker got in his car and hit the Bluetooth button on the dash, switching the phone to the car speakers, then started the engine and pulled cautiously out of his space. The street outside might not be any safer, but at least there he was a moving target, and if anyone tried following him to the gym, Parker would know.

  “Detective?” Güero said, sounding momentarily confused. “Are you still there?”

  “Yeah. I’m here. And still waiting for you to stop running your big mouth.”

  The long pause that followed told Parker that Güero was not a man who was used to being spoken to disrespectfully. Cool. Then Parker knew how to proceed.

  “You’re a real tough guy, aren’t you, Güero? Picking on girls, raping them after you’ve starved them and tied them down, selling them after you’ve broken them. Yeah. Your mama must be so proud of you. So, tell me, dipshit, you run that little gang of yours with a damned Ouija board or what?”

  “You have a mouth on you, Detective, I’ll give you that.”

  “Oh, you have no idea. Why not be a man, Güero, and come speak to me face-to-face? Instead of calling me all the time like a little bitch,” Parker pressed.

  “I wonder,” Güero said, suddenly speaking softly, which for some reason made it worse, “what all that brave talk will sound like when you’re in pain.”

  Again, Parker was dumbstruck. As he pulled out on to Figueroa Street, chills ran down his back. “What did you just say?”

  “Yeah. A voice, when it’s in pain? When it’s suffering? You know . . . it’s a unique sound. And that’s really why I called, to tell you that your world is about to end, and now that I think about it? Boy, are you ever going to wail.”

  Traffic was light but boxing him in on all sides. Parker turned on the wipers as the rain began to pour down heavy, but there was nothing to wipe away the blur going on in his own mind. “What are you—”

  “Here’s the thing, short and simple, Detective. In the club you were just a nuisance. Another cop without a clue. But when I found out that the other side thinks so highly of you as to bring in help, like your stupid, dead partner? Well. Now that, I have no time for. It complicates the game too much. So? I’m taking you off the board.”

  Parker looked around again. The car to his left had a businesswoman in a suit staring off blankly ahead in a traffic daze. The vehicle to his right was a minivan with an old man squinting out his side window. Behind him was
a city bus. Ahead of him was a yellow cab with no passenger. If there was a shooter present, the cab was the likely suspect. He could brake and trap Parker in place at the next red light, or maybe—

  “You probably think, in your tiny little mind, that I’m coming after you, don’t you, Detective.”

  Parker froze.

  “That would be too easy, Detective, and not nearly as fun. You see, my master doesn’t want your life, he wants your soul. And there’s no better way to get a man’s soul . . . than by crushing his heart.”

  “And what’s that supposed to—”

  “She’ll be dead before you can get to her, Detective.”

  When the phone clicked to end the call, the sound might as well have been as loud as a nuclear explosion.

  Trudy.

  He was going after Trudy.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  After a few more hours of chaos in the infirmary, they decided that a good old-fashioned beating about the face and head did not merit an overnight stay there, so he was discharged.

  A female sheriff with short, brown hair gripped his elbow, and guided him down a few corridors and through a pair of gates as they made their way to his cell. A second sheriff was trailing just behind them.

  Hector shuffled his feet, his hands cuffed in front of him and chained tightly to his waist, as exhaustion washed over him in an endless series of waves. Many of the cells along the way were still empty, but a few were still inhabited. But no one stepped out to taunt him this time. No one seemed to even care that he was there.

  When they reached his cell, Hector sighed with relief that he still did not have a cellmate. He had no doubt that he’d have one soon, and once he was transferred to Corcoran, he’d have too many of them to count. From what he’d heard, the place was so overcrowded that the cells were massive, holding twenty to twenty-five beds. That was a lot of eyes on you when you were sleeping and vulnerable. He wondered if there could be such a thing as a real night’s rest in such a place.

  His chains were removed as the female sheriff gave him a little shove and a bark. “Doctor says you’re off duty for the day and to be kept separate from the general population until tomorrow, so enjoy it while it lasts.”