The Parker Trilogy Page 58

  As the cell door closed behind him and banged into place, Hector took a seat on the edge of his cot, closed his eyes and gingerly put his hands over his face. His wounds throbbed, and his upper lip was numb. Taking his right index finger, he traced the outlines of his bandages and took a count: two on his forehead, one just below the line of his scalp and the other over his right eye, a butterfly bandage over the bridge of his nose, and a large, taped piece of slightly oily gauze on his right cheek, where they’d put in the most stitches. This last wound hurt the most and he figured the oily substance seeping through the bandage was anti-bacterial cream.

  When he opened his eyes, he saw The Gray Man seated on the cot across from him, his back against the wall, his legs stretched out along the length of the cot, his feet crossed.

  He had just pushed his hat up from his eyes when Hector said, “Did you have a nice nap?”

  The Gray Man nodded. It’s one of the pleasures I miss most about living on this plane. That, and a good piece of pie.

  He motioned his head toward the pillow on Hector’s cot, where a tray of food had been placed. Chicken with mashed potatoes, gravy and peas. There was also a cup of apple juice and a small plate, empty now and streaked with purple.

  Blueberry, The Gray Man said. Not bad, but not good either.

  Hector shook his head. “That’s great. So, lemme get this straight: while I’m catching a beatdown and dealing with some psycho nurse from, from . . .”

  Go ahead and say it.

  “Yeah. Okay . . . Hell. While all that’s going on, you’re catching a nap after eating a slice of pie?”

  Not all your training is one-on-one, Hector.

  “En serio? Please tell me that you’re kidding.”

  The Gray Man swung his legs off the cot. Taking up a position just opposite Hector, he leaned over, placing his elbows on his knees, his hands folded under his chin and his eyes alight with intensity. Can you feel it?

  Hector scrunched up his face, the pain causing him to wince so badly that his vision went blurry. “Feel what, man? Oh, Dios mio!”

  Exactly. Your God, and mine. He’s right here. With us.

  “Look. I can’t do this, you understand? I can’t. The riddles. The deep talk and stuff. There ain’t no one here but me and you, señor!”

  A very tired look came over The Gray Man’s face, as if he’d done this a hundred times before.

  Thousands, actually. And the last millionth was almost as stubborn as you.

  “Good for him.”

  Good guess. It was a him. Many times, it’s been a “her.” Sin knows no boundaries and no gender. It only knows what it wants: destruction. Of the sinner and the sinned against.

  Hector took a deep breath, then exhaled as he stood. “What? What is it that you want from me?”

  To be ready. Because where you’re headed next, Hector? That prison and the level of evil that has infected it? It’s as close to hell as you can get on this earth.

  “That nurse lady . . .”

  She is, indeed, a problem.

  “She said you won’t be able to help me.”

  Remember. Demons lie. It’s their job.

  “And all that stuff about being your equal or whatever?”

  The Gray Man smiled. They love to boast even more than they love to lie. But even if she were, what does it matter?

  “What?”

  Hector. Think. Was I there at your bedside with that wicked creature?

  “No! That’s why I’m pissed. You—”

  And yet, still, you were not alone . . . were you?

  Hector shook his head, turned his back on The Gray Man and put his hands on his hips. He wanted to scream, but instead he thought hard for a second. “The blue light, you mean?”

  Yes.

  “But it didn’t stop her.”

  Only because she knew it was being wielded by someone still not ready to wield it.

  There were a series of gang signs scratched into the walls on either side of the bars, most of which Hector recognized. Down the hall a few prisoners were in a cell playing a game of dominoes, one mocking the other with curse words and laughter. Besides them, the only other sound was that of water running through a pipe in the ceiling overhead.

  Hector grimaced with frustration. “More riddles.”

  The Gray Man was quiet for a moment, before he responded. Hector Villarosa? Please, just tell me, what’s it going to take?

  “What’s ‘what’ gonna take?”

  How much do you have to lose before you let go? An education. A bright future. A cousin. A woman you loved with all your heart, and the family, the future you wanted with her. Bit by bit, the enemy has been shredding you to pieces . . . even as you have served him loyally. How many lives did you destroy in the process? How many more lives will you destroy next?

  Hector spun around angrily, only to find that The Gray Man was standing now too, his hands in his pockets and his chin tilted downward. Up until now, for whatever reason, Hector had not fully taken measure of his height. He was thin but tall, with shoulders slightly tilted with age. “Look at me! I’ve done nothing but get the shit kicked out of me since I got here, man. Then I was tortured by that . . . thing. Look at my face.” He pulled up his shirt. “And the bruises all over my body, man. Do I look like a threat to anybody?”

  You are certainly a threat to one. The only one that counts at this point.

  “Curtis?” Hector lowered his head. “So. You know, then?”

  That the enemy has asked you to destroy the very man that God has asked you to save? Of course. But that’s not who I’m talking about.

  Hector stared with confusion at The Gray Man.

  The one you are a greatest threat to is yourself.

  “What are you talking about?”

  The mission ahead of you requires two things: repentance and faith. You’ve not completely done the former, nor embraced the latter.

  “Look, man. I said I was sorry! For Marisol, for that Fonseca kid. For Hymie too. I’ve given up the gang. I went into that house like you asked and dealt with that . . . thing. I’m in jail now! I confessed everything.”

  Always with a hard heart and a guarded spirit.

  “Man, are you serious? I give up. I can’t do this.”

  Yes, you can. And it’s my job to help you. Let’s begin with a definition. Repentance: genuine regret and remorse for your wrongs. The first step for a genuine journey of faith to follow.

  Hector leaned his head against the cool bars and closed his eyes, feeling very vulnerable, as if at any moment he could be attacked through them. Still, he held his position as he tried to quiet his mind. It didn’t work that well at first. In fact, it didn’t work at all until . . .

  The Gray Man’s voice came from right next to him, startling Hector, because he was whispering aloud, right into his ear, not speaking inside his head.

  At first, Hector thought it was a prayer of some kind, but that couldn’t be, because he knew those words and he knew no prayers. The words became sentences, the sentences, paragraphs. Then there would be a pause, followed by more. Then another, and so on. Before long, Hector finally recognized them.

  They were from stories. His favorites. The ones he had read at the foot of his bed, or in his closet when his mom was in a bad mood, or after school in the park all alone, or in class when he should’ve been studying math.

  First came words from the grade school ones: Charlotte’s Web. Black Beauty. The Call of the Wild. Island of the Blue Dolphins. The Hound of the Baskervilles.

  Hector gasped as his heart filled to the brim with every scene.

  Then the ones that came later: To Kill A Mockingbird. A Raisin in the Sun. Catcher in the Rye. The Great Gatsby. The Scarlet Letter. The Hobbit.

  The Gray Man kept quoting book passages as if he were quoting scripture. And Hector knew why: having never read the Bible, the closest that he ever got to wisdom and any sort of spirituality were the words and thoughts of other men and women, viewing life thr
ough the prism of shared human experience. All of whom had deeply touched Hector’s young mind as he was growing up.

  In each bit of story, Hector could remember something happy, something liberating, something hopeful, something sincere or something profound. Something, in short, that was utterly the opposite of the misery, vindictiveness, bitterness, violence and poverty-driven bleakness that made up almost every other hour of his waking life.

  Then, having given Hector his prayers of prose, The Gray Man disappeared again, leaving a sacred sort of silence in his wake.

  Hector could no longer hear the men down the hall or the water in the pipe overhead. There were no jangles of guard keys, no yuks or shouts. Nothing. No one. Save Hector and . . .

  The tears that fought their way out of his eyes delivered their salty touch to the edges of the cuts on his face and stung. It didn’t matter. He let them come.

  The presence that had now come to join him in his cell brought only one word to Hector’s mind: context.

  To life. To his mistakes. To his victories. To his regrets and to the decision he was about to make. To the path he was about to choose.

  Hector waited for some grand moment. It never came.

  Instead, over the next twenty minutes or so, Hector sifted through himself, bit by bit, calmly and insecurely. And as he did, the life he knew and the person he once was began to fade away, like an old photograph. He could deny, no longer, what he was becoming, but even more than that he had to accept that what was in control of his life now was not pride or envy, money or a gang. What was in control of his life, for the first time in a long, long time, wasn’t just himself.

  But himself and the ultimate someone else.

  His hands began to grow warm. He smiled.

  The Gray Man had told him that inside Corcoran State Prison, the forces of hell were gathering to keep him from saving his friend. The same friend who was once Hector’s hero. The same “hero” who had told Hector to toss his silly books aside and then led him, like a sheep to the slaughter, down a path of darkness.

  The warmth in his hands began to grow heavy, pooling together in his palms, as Hector finally saw the obvious: he was being asked to save a man who had been no friend at all.

  He would’ve been upset, if not for the simple fact that it made perfect sense.

  One sinner was being sent to save another. Of course.

  Cell Block EH-285 lost all audio and video with a sudden surge of electrical power and a blazing blue light. Fifteen minutes later, when everything had been restored, security determined that the inexplicable burst of light originated from Cell 22, but when the half-dozen sheriff’s deputies rushed there to see if the prisoner within it had smuggled in some sort of electrical device or managed to breach a power conduit in the wall, they found no such thing.

  Instead, they found prisoner 25A84, Hector Villarosa, on his cot, his food tray on the floor untouched and his head on his pillow.

  He was sound asleep.

  Chapter Thirty

  The thing was simple, and the thing was this: get to Trudy, no matter what the cost. The fact that this would not be easy, could even be fatal, meant absolutely nothing to Parker. Without her, life would be intolerable anyway.

  He’d broken the definition of reckless driving the entire way here, calling Trudy first and ordering her to grab the Ruger he’d bought her from the gun safe in the closet and to barricade the front door. He wanted to tell her to run, to get out of the apartment and drive away somewhere, but his gut told him it might be too late for that. It was better for her to take up a defensive position and wait for help.

  Trudy was incredulous at first, then plain terrified. He didn’t want to hang up on her, but he had to in order to call in the threat to the station house and—once his call to Captain Holland’s cell phone went to voice mail—directly to the SWAT unit, breaking protocol in the process and not giving one whit about it.

  Sergeant Davenport answered on the second ring, and after hearing the situation she agreed to scramble a unit for help and then was very blunt in her command: “Parker, don’t go in there alone! You wait for us!”

  He hung up on her command—he was done with taking orders—and pushed on, pulling down his street with resolve and parking a block away from his apartment complex.

  Making his way down the sidewalk to his building, he used a row of hedges along the adjacent property as partial cover, looking for anything or anyone out of place.

  It didn’t take long to find both. Two men in dark suits, no doubt Güero’s goons, were standing at the top of the stairs, guarding either side of the entrance while a black Ford Expedition with large, chrome rims was parked out front, the plume of hot exhaust hitting the cold air and giving testimony to the fact that it’s engine was running and there was no doubt a third goon behind the wheel.

  Up until now, a tiny part of him had hoped that Güero had just been bluffing. The audacity of this act was almost beyond belief, but not entirely. At some point, since the dawn of time, men like Güero, too drunk with power, always reached a point when they believed they were above it all, and especially above justice. Maybe the devil had told him about Parker; maybe Hopkins had. It didn’t matter. Because there was no way Hopkins could have told Güero about Napoleon, no way—

  When two gunshots erupted into the air, Parker’s thoughts disintegrated, his world went gray and his heart grew numb.

  They’d come from inside the apartment complex, which meant either he was too late or that Trudy was doing what he’d told her to do: hold them at bay. They probably hadn’t expected her to be armed, and the apartment was small. If they breached the front door, then someone was going to have to volunteer to go through the bedroom door to get to her, and that meant they were volunteering to get their ass shot. The bravest of soldiers didn’t like that idea on the best of days, and since most criminals were base cowards in disguise, Parker hoped that he still had at least a few minutes to get this done.

  Hold on, baby, I’m coming!

  Combat in the desert, combat on the street; it was all the same. You worked the numbers and played the odds as best you could. If the goon in the car was alone—and the intel was shaky on that, seeing as the Expedition was ringed with tinted windows—then it only made sense to take him out first. But there were too many variables at play there, even if he was alone: the door could be locked, there was no way to approach either side of the car without the chance of being noticed in the side mirrors, and it was highly unlikely that whoever was in there would just hop out to have a chat. No. Whoever was in the car had to be flushed out, and there was only one way to do that.

  Parker walked past the Expedition with his hoodie on and his head down, both hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. Just a poor sap caught out in the drizzly rain, making his way home from work. They’d notice him, eye him, but by the time they made a decision as to what to do next, it’d be too late.

  As he got closer to his building, he could see that the two goons at the top of the stairs each held small automatic weapons, erasing what little doubt might be left of who they were. Uzis. How quaint. Güero was evidently a traditionalist when it came to arming his men.

  Parker took a deep breath. This is where he would be at his most vulnerable. The steps were cement and wet with the day’s rain, there was about twenty of them to the top and the goons held the high ground. One of them was tall, with long black hair. The other was shorter, rounder and jittery; he kept rocking back and forth on his heels.

  Big, tough rat bastards, Parker thought, his anger growing. Three outside, at least three inside, trying to get to Trudy. Six men against one woman. Yeah. Okay. We’ll see just how tough you are.

  He needed a break and he got one; sirens erupted in the distance. Davenport and her unit were on their way. This was good. He walked, still with his head down, right past the stairs, noticing the men look nervously off toward the sound of the sirens. After another five steps, he calmly spun around, drew his 9 mm from one
pocket and his SIG Sauer from the other, and hit the first two steps on a dead run. As he did so, he heard one door—one—of the Expedition suddenly open.

  Too late, homie.

  The two goons at the top of the stairs were just rotating their Uzis at him when Parker put three rounds into the chest of the taller one on the left, launching him back through the glass wall of the entryway, his eyes wide with fear. The second goon was fatter but light on his feet; he managed to sidestep Parker’s first shot and spray the stairs in front of Parker with a round of shots. Shards of cement hit Parker’s neck and chin, but not enough to break his concentration. The next two shots from the SIG caught the second goon in the left shoulder and in his solar plexus. He went down in a heap, his Uzi falling from his hand and down the railing before it fell into a planter full of miniature roses next to it.

  The goon from the Expedition was approaching quickly from behind, but getaway drivers could always be counted on to be the weakest link in any crew. Hence the fact they were left behind and told to wait and be ready to drive.

  He’d gotten out of the Expedition without drawing his weapon first. Rookie mistake. As such, he only managed to get off one poorly aimed shot that struck the building sign five feet to Parker’s right, blowing a splintery hole in the “A” of “Arroyo Villas.” Parker pivoted. He was better with the nine, but the SIG had the best angle. Three shots. Two missed, the third struck the goon driver in the right cheek, blowing off half his face in the process. He fell, screaming, to the sidewalk, dropping his gun. But he immediately began scrambling after it.

  In the desert, the military rule was to always protect your six. Your rear was where you were most vulnerable. Killing was discouraged, but what happened in the desert, stayed in the desert. But this was the city. A cold, rainy, shitty city that had spawned these filthy creatures who were now trying to take away the one good thing left in his life. And Parker wasn’t going to let that happen. He took aim on the goon’s forehead, watching him squirm, when he heard Napoleon’s voice. Don’t do it, Parker.