Wages Of Sin (Luis Chavez Book 3)

by Mark Wheaton

After promising to pick them up the next morning to go to the funeral home and make arrangements, Michael had gone home, emptied a bottle of Maker’s Mark, passed out for a couple of hours, then drank a bottle of Shiraz a friend of Naomi’s had brought by a few months earlier when she’d come for dinner. When he woke up from that, it was well past noon on Tuesday. He’d missed picking up Naomi’s parents, the appointment with the funeral director, and a lunchtime call he was supposed to have with his boss, LA district attorney Deborah Rebenold.

  There’d be no talking his way out of this one. Naomi’s parents would know what a louse their daughter was dating. He couldn’t show his face at the funeral now, could he? In his despair, he considered driving down to San Pedro and throwing himself off the bridge but then dismissed the thought as melodramatic. It would shatter his children’s lives and give confirmation to Helen that she’d wasted too much of her life on a loser.

  Once a survey of the kitchen cabinets revealed he was completely out of alcohol, Michael decided to wander down the hill to his local liquor store and repair the issue. When he grabbed his cell phone, he found four voice mails. The first was from Naomi’s father, though he only hung up. The second was from Deborah, who in syrupy tones let him know she had marked his absence from the phone call and told him “to take all the time he needed.” The third was from Father Luis Chavez, who succinctly said that Oscar “had nothing to do with the wreck that killed Naomi Okpewho.”

  Why the hell is he in my life? Michael wondered as he cut off Luis’s cursory condolences.

  He didn’t recognize the number of the fourth and was about to delete it without listening to it but then heard the opening line.

  “My name is Gennady Archipenko, and I was given this number by your office. I had been inquiring after Naomi Okpewho,” the young-sounding, Russian-accented man explained. “She left a message asking after my financial dealings with Charles Sittenfeld, who worked at my bank. My house was robbed this past Sunday only hours after Okpewho was killed. The very information she requested was stolen in the form of laptops and discs. What I recovered over the next two days might be of interest to you and your office. Please do call me back. I would like to meet in person.”

  Killed. The man had said killed.

  Up until now Michael had felt like a crazy person trying to convince others of something obvious to him but unseen by them. But here was a man who seemed to believe the same as he did, all forensic evidence aside.

  Then he hesitated. What if it was a trap? But the idea of a bullet waiting for him somewhere down a dark alley didn’t sound so bad right now. At least he’d die a justice-seeking hero in the line of duty.

  That isn’t such a bad legacy to leave for the kids, is it?

  He rang Archipenko back. When it went to voice mail, he texted the number instead.

  I’d love to meet. Can you see me today? Maybe even right now?

  It took Luis two days to decide to approach his father. He’d prayed on it, sure, but nothing came of that. He’d gone through the motions of teaching class at St. John, celebrating Mass, visiting parishioners, hearing confession, and chairing a parish meeting with the other priests of St. Augustine’s. He’d kept a line open to God, as it were, in case the Almighty had something to say to him, but mostly he thought about his dad.

  Though it was easy to recall the negative memories, these exhausted themselves soon enough. Positive ones began to trickle in. Ones of Sebastian at Christmas, sitting with his sons in front of the television, even riding around with them in their old car, a ’78 Ford Thunderbird, which got incredibly hot in the summertime.

  But it was Luis’s mind playing tricks on him. He realized he was remembering photographs, not actual memories. They were pictures his mother had kept around. This led to other memories, such as when they’d gone to Dodger Stadium together. The photo his mother took was of her two boys standing close to the field, suggesting they had far better seats than they could’ve afforded tickets wise. Luis knew his father had been there and began to reconstruct the evening, inserting his dad’s face into his already-murky memory. He couldn’t recall if Sebastian had shaved off his mustache by then, but as he had it in the Christmas picture Luis remembered the strongest, that was the image transposed onto the baseball memory.

  He did this with several others. A walk up the beach in Malibu, a trip to the Santa Monica pier, a childhood excursion across the border into Tijuana, the first time Luis had ever been to Mexico. Each of these memories, which were vague and aided by his mother’s photos and later conversations with his brother, helped solidify an image of his father.

  It took some doing, but after careful mental editing Luis had put his father back into his childhood one memory at a time, realizing how much he must’ve excised him.

  When Tuesday rolled around and he had an evening off, he dialed up Oscar and asked where he could find Sebastian.

  “Did you talk to Michael Story yet?” Oscar asked.

  “Left a voice mail,” Luis replied. “Where’s my father?”

  “Your dad’s working a site near Melrose and Highland,” Oscar said. “Seven hundred block.”

  Luis was pensive on the drive over. Traffic was bad. Part of him even hoped he’d left late enough in the day that he’d missed his window.

  At least I tried.

  He thought of Pastor Whillans and what he might say about that. He realized the old priest would’ve scowled at him. Echoed Oscar’s remark and told him that he wasn’t himself. Not only that, he wasn’t the man God expected him to be.

  Where was it written, after all, that God had to be responsive to his priests?

  With this in mind, he took a shortcut through Hancock Park and made it to the construction site with daylight to spare. After parking at a meter, he jogged across the street to the three-story multiunit behemoth that was eating up half a city block. The individual units looked like closets from the street level, but given the location, Luis figured the renters would pay thousands a month.

  Though it was late in the day, there were still at least three or four dozen men hard at work framing the structure. Luis slipped through the chain-link fence that surrounded the work site, cupped his hand over his eyes to block the sun, and tried to spy his father up on the higher levels.

  “Can I help you?” a gruff, but not accusatory, voice asked.

  Luis turned to see a man in a hard hat approach from alongside the structure. He figured he would’ve gotten it worse if he wasn’t wearing the collar.

  “I’m looking for Sebastian Chavez,” Luis said. “Is he here?”

  “All the way up,” the man said, worry edging into his voice. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, family matter,” Luis assured him, surprised to hear someone voicing concern over his father.

  The workman took a couple of steps back, then returned with a second hard hat.

  “Got to wear this on site, Padre.”

  “Thank you,” Luis said, putting it on as he went to the nearest ladder.

  “Sebastian’s one of the best we’ve got,” the worker enthused. “Works like a man half his age. Brings his own tools. Never misses a nail.”

  It was a surprisingly impassioned endorsement. Luis wondered if the workman feared he was there to take Sebastian away. He nodded and headed up the steps.

  Sure enough, Sebastian was all the way on top, nailing struts to rafters that would support the eventual roof. Though Luis could see and hear nail guns being used, his father was doing delicate angled work. As Osorio had said, Sebastian had a quick hammer and seemed incapable of missing. When he drove a nail, there was no hesitation, only focus. It was hypnotic to watch.

  Sebastian finally noticed his son and gave a friendly wave, as if having expected him. He put his hammer and nails back in his tool belt, unclipped his safety line, and headed over to Luis.

  “You found me,” Sebastian said, cradling his hard hat. “Praise God.”

  Okay.

  “I’m glad to see you,”
Sebastian said. “We didn’t leave things right at the bishop’s house.”

  “We didn’t leave things at all.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Sebastian said.

  They went down to ground level, Sebastian waving to a few other workers as the crew cleaned up the site and prepared to quit for the day. He led Luis to the mouth of the building’s underground garage, the concrete of the ramp and lower levels long poured and dried.

  “A man named Oscar de Icaza came to speak to me on the bishop’s behalf,” Luis said. “He asked that you leave Osorio alone, as it’s becoming a bit of a strain on the old man’s constitution.”

  “Ah,” Sebastian said. “Who’s Oscar?”

  Luis gave him the short version.

  “I remember now,” Sebastian said. “It was probably during one of our conversations about Nicolas. Osorio said that he knew people in the underground. They said the same thing as the police. Nicolas was killed in a cross fire. One gunman emerged from the dark to kill two men waiting in a car. Nicolas walked past on his way home from Sacré Coeur. Nicolas was unlucky.”

  “Yes,” Luis said, not wanting to dwell. “That’s what they say.”

  “Then why,” Sebastian asked, “does God say something different?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “God told me that it was Nicolas who was targeted and the two men were the ones caught in the cross fire.”

  Luis was stunned. The voice of God, so elusive to him, spoke to his father? What Sebastian was saying sounded downright crazy.

  Though the shooter had never been caught, it was known that there were two OGs in the car that night. They were heavy hitters with one of the local gangs. They’d recently been implicated in a murder, so it wasn’t a surprise that someone had taken a shot at them as revenge. It had made sense. Someone targeting Nicolas? The idea was ludicrous. But . . . was it any less crazy than the many things that God had revealed to Luis?

  This was the second person this week trying to make sense of a grisly death by suggesting it was premeditated murder. This time the accusation was backed by divine authority.

  “Are you sure you’re hearing God?” Luis asked as gently as possible.

  “I am!” Sebastian replied. “As sure as I am of anything in this world. The reason I went to Bishop Osorio was that I believed that if God was telling that to me, he would probably tell Osorio as well. The bishop loved Nicolas like a son. I don’t know if he’s ever recovered from his death.”

  Luis was surprised by this. He’d never heard Osorio say such a thing.

  “Did God tell you why Nicolas would’ve been targeted?” Luis asked.

  “No,” Sebastian admitted. “I tried to speak to the police about it, but they didn’t care.”

  They didn’t care then either, Luis thought.

  “I had no idea where else to turn,” Sebastian said.

  Luis regarded his father for a moment. Taken on their own, Sebastian’s words weren’t that surprising. He was a man who’d lost so much in life. At some point, he’d taken stock and tried to pinpoint where it all went wrong. So much was his own fault that it perhaps became easy to focus on the single event that wasn’t.

  “Maybe I’ll talk to Osorio,” Luis said. “And I have a few contacts in the police. I can try that, too.”

  “That’s what the bishop said,” Sebastian admitted. “He said you helped people.”

  Another surprise.

  “That’s why you wanted to see me then?” Luis asked.

  “No, I wanted to see you because I wanted to get to know my son,” Sebastian explained. “I’m not asking you to welcome me back into your life with open arms. I’m asking for you to give me a chance to convince you that I’m not the man you remember any longer. That I’ve changed.”

  “I barely remember you at all,” Luis admitted.

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” Sebastian said with gravity. “A fresh start then.”

  “Are you looking for forgiveness?”

  “Aren’t we all?” Sebastian replied glibly. “But no, that’s not it entirely. I can’t make you love me as a father, but I do want you to let me love you as a son. I’ve been without love in my heart for so long that it made me old and embittered. When I began to love the Lord, I realized how much I missed that feeling. I wanted more of it. I wanted to love. And I knew the place to start was right here.”

  He tapped Luis’s chest. Luis wondered where this man was when his mother was dying or when his brother had been savagely torn away and he truly needed a father.

  “Could we try?” Sebastian asked.

  Luis wondered if this was God in some way coming at him from another angle. He’d long regarded all challenges put in front of him as done so by God. How could this be any different? He had to trust his instincts even if the voice of God had grown silent within his own mind.

  “Okay,” Luis said quietly.

  “All right,” Sebastian replied. “That’s all I can ask.”

  Luis rose and indicated the break in the chain-link fence. “Do you need a ride home?”

  “Sure, I’d appreciate it,” Sebastian said. “But what I’d like first is for my son to pray with me. That all right?”

  Luis returned to his father’s side and knelt even as other workers passed by, sending them curious glances.

  “It’ll be fine.”

  Michael showered, shaved, and sobered up in the hours between when he’d first heard from Gennady Archipenko and when he pulled into the parking lot of the Brazilian restaurant Archipenko had recommended as a meeting spot. He’d thought he recognized the name when the young Russian had mentioned it on the phone. When he saw it in the flesh, he realized he’d taken Helen there to celebrate some long-ago anniversary. He couldn’t remember if it had been in the early days, when he’d arranged for the occasion weeks in advance, or later, when everything was a last-minute race thrown together in hopes of feigning preparation.

  Things would’ve been different with Naomi, he told himself, then wondered if this was true.

  Though he thought he looked in pretty good shape, the look on Archipenko’s face as he rose from the table to shake his hand told him he still appeared fairly rough.

  “Are you all right?” Gennady asked after Michael ordered a tea and a caipirinha.

  “You don’t need me to be all right,” Michael replied. “If you’ve got nothing real, then who cares? You’ll never see me again. If you have something actionable, you want me angry, bereft, vengeful. Anything but ‘all right.’”

  Gennady stared at Michael for a moment, then looked down. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you and Ms.—”

  “Okpewho. Naomi Okpewho.”

  “I didn’t realize the nature of your relationship.”

  “That’s okay. But yes. If you have something for me, I’m a loaded gun. Just point me in the right direction.”

  It was a melancholy statement, but with enough humor to make Gennady smile. Michael had checked the young man out. Though he hadn’t been arrested, indicted, or even implicated in any crimes, his name had elicited a chuckle from a detective in LAPD’s Commercial Crimes Division.

  “We get that name now and again,” the detective had said. “We weren’t sure he was a real guy for a time. Somebody who might’ve taken a meeting with somebody else. We’ve checked him out down to his socks, and he’s clean as a whistle. Not so much as a moving violation or parking ticket.”

  “Do you remember every name?” Michael had asked.

  The detective laughed. “Experience has taught me that you don’t get that many calls about someone without a reason.”

  As Naomi said, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, Michael thought.

  “He’ll have to come up for air at some point,” the detective continued. “Then we’ll open a file on him.”

  Michael wondered what the detective would say if he knew he was sitting opposite the young Russian right now.

  “So, let’s hear it,” Michael said to Gennady.

/>   Gennady waited so long to reply that Michael pushed himself away from the table to leave. But then the Russian raised a hand.

  “Ms. Okpewho called me about Charles Sittenfeld,” Gennady explained. “I barely knew the man and had no clue about his murder-for-hire dealings. So I had no idea why she would call.”

  “All right.”

  “But then I took a look into Sittenfeld’s accounts at the bank myself.”

  “You can do that?”

  “No, not really,” Gennady admitted. “But let’s say curiosity got the better of me once I found a knife under my wife’s pillow.”

  “Okay.”

  “I think Ms. Okpewho came across what I did,” Gennady explained. “He’s a very arrogant man. Someone who did the bare minimum to cover his tracks.”

  The fruit from a poisoned tree, Michael realized.

  “So what’s the crime?” Michael asked.

  “Difficult to ascertain,” Gennady said. He took a small plastic key drive from his pocket and placed it on the table. “Which is why it might be better for you to look through the records than me.”

  “But there has to be something there you found actionable, right? Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.”

  “Yes,” Gennady said cautiously. “The transactions recorded on that drive are not, on their face, irregular. They are high-dollar financial transfers involving a priority client who moved money from foreign banks into an account here in Los Angeles. The money in that account was then distributed out in ways similarly above suspicion.”

  “So?”

  “Sittenfeld was the man at the switch for all of these transfers,” Gennady said. “The only man at the switch, and thereby had complete oversight. He signed off on each one over the course of almost thirty years. All for one priority client, all for transfers coming in from a handful of foreign banks. What’s suspicious is that all that money together adds up to almost twenty-three billion dollars.”

  Michael sat up straight. He could be cynical about a lot of things, but $23 billion was a massive amount to pass through the hands of one man, no matter how many years it took.

  “Who is the priority client?” Michael demanded.