The Parker Trilogy Page 78

  Melon looked at him funny. “My what?”

  Parker squirmed. “It’s nothing. Just something I read in a book.”

  “One of them Oprah books it sounds like to me, dude,” Melon said with a mocking laugh.

  “Yeah, yeah. Probably.”

  “Were you reading that during your mani-pedi?”

  Parker laughed loudly. “Okay, eaaaaasy now, Corporal.”

  “Oh! Not even here a half hour and he’s already pulling rank?” Melon shot back. In his best Forrest Gump voice, he added, “Yes, sir! SAR-geANT!”

  This caused a fit of laughter that filled the car as they shook their heads at what Parker guessed was the mutual realization that they’d picked up right where they’d left off, as if the years that had passed by were nothing. And they weren’t. That was a good feeling.

  “You set up good here?” Parker asked.

  “Yeah. Bought a small house with some of my VA money. Ain’t getting rich, but making decent money. Enough to keep the belly full and the cable on. You?”

  “Work, as I mentioned, is a bit of problem right now. But there’s this girl . . .”

  “Ohhh, shit. The opening four words of every man’s downfall.”

  Parker told him briefly about Trudy. Mostly just the basics.

  “How’d you meet her?”

  Parker replied, “During . . . uh . . . an investigation.”

  “Really? No shit.”

  “Yeah. Long story, but basically she was a friend of one my suspects’ wives.” Parker hesitated, realizing too late that didn’t sound too good.

  Melon jumped on it. “Wow, the plot thickens. So, you’re a bad cop?”

  “No. No, I’m not . . .”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m serious. The suspect ended up being completely cleared. The relationship started after the investigation was closed.”

  Traffic around them was light. A group of seagulls flew overhead as a kid on a rickety bicycle rode by on the opposite side of the road.

  “Ah. Okay.”

  “But not before she shot and killed one of the real perps.”

  Melon jumped. “What? Dude. This chick took someone out? No. Way!”

  “Yeah. She was protecting some kids he was after.”

  “Damn. Well. Sorry, man. I’ve never even met her but I’m already gonna have to steal her away from you.”

  “Ha! Your ugly ass wouldn’t stand a chance,” Parker shot back.

  Melon chuckled as he made a turn off the highway. They made some more small talk as the road stretched out ahead of them and then they drove in silence for a few minutes.

  Parker was looking out over a row of houses, feeling the cool sea air through his open window, the smell of salt foreign and exhilarating. Melon was pretty much the same as he remembered.

  But, with his new life, would he still be down with the real reason Parker was here?

  As if on cue, Melon broke the silence and nonchalantly said, “So? Who we going after and why?”

  When Güero had left the room, the curtains hadn’t closed completely, leaving Maggie with a thin gap through which she could see into the next room. Luisa was still in her chair. Delva and the others moved in and out of sight at random.

  The roar of large trucks was coming from a distance. The adobe house they were in muted most of the sound at first, but as the trucks pulled up, the house vibrated so violently the thicker grains of dirt on the floor bounced up and down.

  “They’re here,” Misha said, looking out the window.

  “Two trucks, correct?” Güero asked.

  “Yes,” Delva said, “one for the wild and the other for the tamed.”

  What the hell does that mean? Maggie thought. Maddeningly, no one in the other room said anything to clarify the comment.

  “What now, sister?” Anastasia said.

  Delva scoffed. “You know the answer to that as well as I do. We prep the room while the girl sleeps.”

  A flurry of shuffling feet broke out and then the curtains were pulled completely open, the brightness temporarily blinding Maggie this time, as she hadn’t been expecting it.

  Güero was barking orders. “You guard the door,” he said to Eenie. “You other two, go outside and secure the trucks. Tell the drivers to wait until we’ve checked the cargo.”

  Both Meenie and Miney replied in unison. “Yes, jefe!”

  Delva came into the room with Güero, who again looked at Maggie as if he could only see her one way: naked and as an object of his perversions. She looked away.

  “You!” Güero barked at Sonia.

  “Yes?”

  “You did this,” Güero said, motioning down at Ernesto, spooking some flies off his face in the process.

  Sonia was beside herself. Pointing at Delva, she answered, “Under her orders, yes.”

  “Ah. Always with the excuses. Stupid puta!” Güero said. “This better go quick, then. We don’t need word getting back to the cartel any sooner than it has to that he’s dead.”

  Sonia didn’t look like she appreciated being called whatever he had just called her. Again, Maggie began to wonder if Sonia was the weak link in this posse. Her contempt for Güero was growing alongside her obvious jealousy of Maggie.

  But Sonia’s contempt was clearly rooted in longing. The kind a jilted lover has until the object that they supposedly hate shows them a little hope of the love they used to have. If Güero did that, Maggie had little doubt Sonia would throw herself at him again. Even after what he’d supposedly done to her face. It would be shocking if Maggie hadn’t already seen it countless times at the women’s shelter back home, women who had come in beaten to a pulp, leaving only days later to run back to the very men who had threatened their lives.

  Maggie tried to stay as close to the post as possible and made no sudden movements. She simply watched carefully as Misha filled a large bowl with water and carried it over to Anastasia, who dipped a rag in it and began wiping Luisa down. First her face, then her neck and shoulders, before finally getting her hands and arms. Misha followed along with each step, using a dry towel to dab up the wetness.

  Misha looked up. “One of you get the henna for me.”

  With a nod, Anastasia complied.

  Maggie winced in confusion. Henna?

  Güero noticed her. “What are you looking at, you little whore?”

  Maggie looked down and said nothing.

  “That’s a good girl. You’re lucky to be alive, you know that?”

  Maggie stayed frozen.

  “Answer me!”

  Against the urging of every cell in her body, Maggie forced herself to nod, suppressing a sneer as the bastard laughed at her.

  “Yeah. Not so tough now, are you?”

  How tough do you expect me to be when I’m tied up to a post, you chickenshit? Maggie wanted to say. Instead, she closed her eyes. She had to stay calm.

  Play the long game, Maggie. You lose it and get shot in the head then you’ll be absolutely no help to Luisa.

  It was true. She needed to focus on the positive and—believe it or not—there was plenty so far. One, the perv that had been touching her all the time had been ordered to stay away from her. And the murderous rapist who was fixated with her had been convinced to leave her alone, too. By now, countless abuses, including gang rape, could’ve happened to her and all she had was a bump on the head and some scratches and bruises.

  And Luisa was still alive. There was that, too.

  Chapter Twenty

  The colored rain fell all around them, bouncing off leaves and arcing to the ground, as the lightning did another dance across the otherwise barren sky. Tabitha looked at him and seethed, her little chest going up and down, her knuckles popping as she extended and protracted her fingers, over and over.

  Father Soltera was holding his breath so firmly in his lungs he could barely exhale. What do I do now? he thought.

  Tabitha began a slow, laborious walk towards him, her head tilted to one side, her eyes as va
cant as a wild animal staring down its prey.

  “What?” she croaked. “Letting Joaquin Murietta go, so he could do what he did to me, wasn’t enough for you, Father? Now you want to remain stuck here, too?”

  “Listen,” he replied in a weak voice, her use of Joaquin’s name rocking him to his core. “No one wants to leave you here, young lady. No one wants you to . . .”

  She kept advancing as she talked. “Live in hell? Because that’s where I’ve called home for a long time. After Joaquin was done.”

  Father Soltera blinked. Something did not compute. It took a split second to register but when it did, he felt stupid for not catching it sooner. He’d suspected it but was never quite sure. But now, he had his proof. “You never suffered at the hands of that monster, and you are no child.”

  She dropped her chin with a look of offense. “Uh . . . excuuuse me?”

  “The way you speak, the words, the intent, they are beyond the years of the mirage you inhabit. You’re like all your kind: a liar. A liar serving the king of liars.”

  “Yeah? You think so? Well, if that were true then tell me this, tell me—”

  He suddenly remembered his teachings at seminary. When it came to demons, you were never to speak to them. To engage, debate or try to convince them. Ever. Because doing so also meant doing the one thing that could be a fatal mistake: listening to them.

  They had centuries of practice and you . . . did not.

  “Stop!” he screamed. Then, stepping backwards, he began to recite a prayer by Thomas Merton.

  The prayer seemed to hurt her, but still she was coming. When she was only thirty feet away, he began looking around for something, anything to defend himself with. He needn’t have bothered.

  He’d just taken a step over a small log when a series of vines began to snake their way across the forest floor. No. Not vines. Roots.

  His right ankle was wrapped immediately by two thick ones that began to squeeze down, hard, on his flesh and bones. Crying out, he dropped to one knee, realizing too late what a bad idea this was as a clump of finer roots clutched his fingers and claimed his wrists with stunning speed.

  “No!” Tabitha screamed.

  He looked up to see that she was being entwined as well. A series of roots had spiraled up around her feet and around her calves. She teetered and fell sideways, a mask of shock on her face.

  More roots came at them, like a herd of slithering snakes, from all directions. He struggled to get up, fell, and tried again with a shout of frustration. It was no use.

  Tabitha, meanwhile, still had one hand free. It was her dagger hand, and she began using it to stab at the roots.

  That’s when, clear as day, Father Soltera heard the forest scream. Not a tree, not a branch—the entire forest cried out in a shriek that split his eardrums. Then another sound ricocheted between the tree trunks in a lingering thud not unlike the antlers of a rutting moose. Knock, knock, knock! the sound came. Knock, knock, knock!

  Something groaned. The woods above them shifted.

  Father Soltera looked up, and what he saw there made him question his sanity entirely.

  When Hector was done speaking with Detective Parker, he was sent to the library for cleaning duty. He was not the least bit surprised. Like most new inmates, cleaning duty was a rite of passage. But this was the first time he was assigned to the library and he knew that The Smiling Midget, or perhaps whoever worked for the prison that was under the influence of Güero Martinez, had made this happen so that he could get to that copy of Moby Dick.

  And the shiv.

  After pushing his cleaning cart through the entryway of the library, he straightened the vacuum, which had fallen sideways a bit, and grabbed his cleaning rags. He had been here a few times already, but as a reader. Now, he used the rag and a bottle of Windex to wipe down a long row of desks with banks of computer monitors on them, taking care to focus on the keyboards, which were filthy with dirt and grime. The computers were nearest the entrance and usually under close supervision: no social media sites worked, nor any porn sites. You signed on and off via the librarian, who sat behind a nearby counter with a speckled Formica top, and when you were done, a print out of all the sites you had visited online was reviewed before you could leave. Only inmates up for appeal who had been granted the rights to defend themselves were given any extra privacy, and even then it was minimal.

  The librarian today was a young hipster with over-sized, wire-rimmed glasses that were fashionable these days. Hector had sold many a bag of H to guys who looked just like him, outside concerts at Hollywood Forever Cemetery or in the alleys behind trendy restaurants in Los Feliz. This one wasn’t too much of a douche, though, and the week before he’d even helped Hector find a copy of West with the Night by Beryl Markham, which Hector had read about in a newspaper article and was so far finding a great read.

  Today, however, the librarian was in a mood. “They usually clean the computer desks last,” he said in a huff, as if it mattered one bit what got cleaned in what order.

  Hector bobbed his head, sighed and went back to his cart, which he pushed past the periodicals section and towards fiction, which was divided by genre for some dumbass reason, one of which was “CLASSICS,” which, um, wasn’t a genre. This annoyed Hector more than it should have, as did the fact that the classics were now divided not by author name, but by book title. New to the prison, he wasn’t about to make waves, but he was determined to see this all made right someday.

  Scratching his head, he removed the vacuum cleaner from the cart, plugged it into a nearby socket and began vacuuming his way down the aisle until he reached the “M–N” section and found the copy of Moby Dick. He was willing to bet, oh, a month’s prison wages that nobody in here ever read Moby Dick. The shiv was right where he was told it would be. A purple toothbrush, its handle had been sharpened into a wicked point. Electrical tape was balled up thick on the brush side to form a crude handle that allowed for a solid grip. He swiped it and put it in a pouch on the cart, then covered it with a few packs of paper towels.

  He was turning to vacuum his way back out of the aisle when he just couldn’t help himself. He quickly grabbed the copy of Moby Dick and flipped it open. He was wrong, but not entirely. It had been checked out. Three times. Twice by a guy named Elias, back in the mid-80s and most recently in 2004 by someone named Samuel. Three times in over thirty years. It was almost tragic.

  Two hours later and he was done with the entire library, cleaning the main counter last, under the watchful eye of the hipster, who evidently felt bad for snapping at him earlier. “Hey, you want this?” he asked.

  Hector looked down at the hipster’s hand, which was holding out a can of Pepsi.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It’s an extra one from the fridge in the break room. Still cold.”

  Hector slotted the broom he had in his hand back in one of the holes in the cart, bobbed his chin and took the Pepsi. “Thanks. What’s your name, man?”

  “Wayne.”

  “Wayne, huh? That’s a white-boy name for sure. I’m Hector.”

  It was Wayne’s turn to bob his chin as he shuffled some papers around on the counter. “Nice to meet you, Hector,” he said.

  Then, he froze. Literally. In place. One hand an inch off the counter, the other hand reaching for a slip of paper, his head partially down and his eyes staring downward, his head tilted like a mannequin.

  A chill ran over Hector. Setting the Pepsi down, he took a step back.

  Are you really still deliberating? The Gray Man said.

  Hector turned around. “About what?”

  The Gray Man looked at the cart. About what you’ve hidden in there. About what the other side wants you to do with it.

  “Listen,” Hector murmured as he shifted his gaze away from the penetrating stare of The Gray Man, “I’m not sure I can do this, is all.”

  Do what?

  “Be . . . a millionth or whatever. Ya know. Save someone, be good.”


  We’ve talked about this already. We’ve—

  “I know, I know. I remember. But, man, my whole life?” Hector said, looking back to The Gray Man. “My whole life I’ve done wrong. I’ve screwed up. And now Marisol . . . what I’ve done to her. I mean, I appreciate you believing in me and all, but I’m not sure I’m worth all your efforts, Gray.”

  The Gray Man nodded a few times before tilting his head. Call on the blue.

  “What?”

  You heard me. Call on the blue. I’ll help you this time.

  Hector paused, then did as he was told. Like calling on your lungs to freeze in place or for your mind to fix on one thought, the blue was an internal part of him now, both physical and ethereal. He could actually . . . feel it cooling him from the inside.

  Good, The Gray Man said in an encouraging voice. Now, bring it out. Just tell it where to go, like you tell your foot where to step or you head which way to turn.

  “Oookay. Okay,” Hector said. The moment was a little fearful, like the first time you set off on your bike without the training wheels. But, before long, a cool liquid with the consistency of motor oil began to pool in his hands. He turned his palms up and gasped. All the lines in them were carved in dark blue, and his fingerprints were alight on the tips of his fingers.

  Do you see that, Hector Villarosa?

  “Yeah,” Hector said with wide eyes. “Yeah.”

  That is a force from heaven. There. In you. A part of you.

  Hector nodded. Turning his palms towards one another, he watched in wonder as the blue reached out to itself, in slender strands, from one hand to the next. Pulsing. Vibrating.

  Do you think such a power could dwell in an evil person, Hector?

  Hector shook his head.

  Men do good things, Hector. Men do bad things. God sees it all. And if He has ordained you for this mission then I, for one, am not about to question Him, The Gray Man said in a somber voice. Are you?