Wages Of Sin (Luis Chavez Book 3)

by Mark Wheaton

  Michael pointed out a few other transfers. “Here’s a more typical one,” he said. “You’ve got a charitable organization in Senegal communicating with Sittenfeld here in Los Angeles. Because of the US government’s watchdog programs relating to charities they believe may have ties to radicalism, they have to jump through a number of hoops to free up a half million in donations to be transferred to a bank in Yemen. But because they’re a nonprofit and their status is valid in the US, they’re ICE hoops, not banking institution ones.”

  “And all the big transfers are also from nonprofits?”

  “So far,” Michael said. “Or at least groups that are using that status to move their money faster.”

  “Sounds like you need to talk to Charles Sittenfeld,” Luis said.

  “Yeah, but he’s been moved out of here for his own protection,” Michael said. “If I could just find him.”

  Luis nodded and indicated the numbers from which the money originated. “They never come in from the same account numbers, do they? It’d require some serious infrastructure to pull that off, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yeah, or you’d need to control a single bank,” Michael said.

  “Sure, but the numbers are so wildly different. You’ve got different bank reference numbers peppered throughout. They’re not the same banks.” Michael turned to Luis, who simply shrugged. “You’re the one who knows this stuff. I’m looking for discrepancies on a screen.”

  “Well, keep it up,” Michael said. “I’ll check into the reference numbers. See if we can at least get a sense of what country these are coming in from.”

  Michael switched to the e-mails Gennady had pulled from the bank’s servers relating to Sittenfeld. Luis saw these were from as disparate a group as a Chinese industrial outfit working on building a new railroad in Kenya and a Russian natural gas company. Luis wasn’t sure if any of this was related to money laundering, but he didn’t put it past any large company to be completely free of corruption.

  All of a sudden, he saw something on the screen that was so unexpected, so out of left field, he thought he might fall out of his chair.

  “Hey, will you go back? Maybe one or two pages?”

  Michael bounced back up through the inbox until Luis was again looking at a cache of e-mails sent around the same time a decade and a half before. They were all pieces of correspondence between Sittenfeld and one Nicolas Chavez.

  “It can’t be,” Luis said aloud. “Can you open one of those?”

  “Um, sure,” Michael said, clicking the keyboard touch pad.

  The e-mail opened, revealing a short note from Nicolas thanking Sittenfeld for talking with him on the telephone. It seemed to imply that Nicolas had been mollified by whatever Sittenfeld had told him, and the words back from the banker were cordial.

  Luis had to look at the e-mail twice to confirm what he already knew. First of all, it was his brother’s e-mail address from so long ago. Second, the e-mail was dated three days before he was killed.

  “Are there more?” Luis asked, voice wavering.

  Michael went to the beginning of the conversation. It was Nicolas following up on the call, a document attached to the note.

  “Open that,” Luis commanded.

  When Michael did so, a poorly scanned image of a bank transfer authorization appeared on the screen. Sittenfeld’s signature was on the bottom, as was a dollar amount in excess of $10 million. The party for whom it was being approved was not mentioned by name. There was only an account number listed.

  “What is it?” Michael asked.

  “Nicolas Chavez was my brother,” Luis said, mind reeling.

  “‘Was’?”

  “He was murdered a few days after this last e-mail.”

  Michael’s face registered surprise. He turned back to the transfer document and scrutinized it more closely. “It looks like Nicolas came across one of the transfers somehow. Was he working at a bank?”

  “No,” Luis said. “He was still in high school. He didn’t have a job. He spent all his time at . . .”

  Luis didn’t finish his sentence. It was almost too crazy to comprehend.

  “Can you search for correspondence between Sittenfeld and a Bishop Eduardo Osorio?” Luis asked, taking a leap.

  Michael did. Nothing came up. Luis couldn’t believe how relieved he felt.

  “So what is that?” Michael asked.

  “I don’t know,” Luis said. “Nicolas never mentioned talking to some banker. But we weren’t exactly close at the time.”

  This was true due to the distance Luis kept from Nicolas and his devotions at the time. Now, more than anything in the world, he wished his brother could’ve felt like confiding in him whatever he’d been doing in his last days. But he had confided in someone. He didn’t know if Osorio, in his diminished state, would remember any of it.

  Still, he had to try. If this wasn’t God laying out a path for him to follow, he didn’t know what was.

  VIII

  Michael was feeling woozy by the time Luis drove him back to his house in Silver Lake, the pain drugs wearing off and a sense of general weariness setting in. Luis parked and helped Michael limp inside, settling him on the sofa as he went to the kitchen to get water.

  Michael stared into the darkness of his house, puzzling out where to even begin with all of this. He had to get to Sittenfeld, but the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence? He’d had to google it in the car to figure out whom they oversaw.

  “Are you going to be okay?” Luis asked as he returned with a water bottle.

  Michael nodded, taking the bottle gingerly. It had been Naomi’s, one she’d brought over for when she went for a run around the Silver Lake Reservoir.

  “I know what you think of me, Father,” Michael said. “And you’re right. I haven’t always been a good guy. But this case is a new one on me. There’s no clear bad guy this time. It’s this phantom murder squad that makes hits look like accidents or random events. But somehow they’re tied to Sittenfeld, and somehow he’s tied to the government. I don’t know about you, but if I don’t go after them for what they did to Naomi, I don’t know what I’m doing on this planet anymore. And if they had something to do with the murder of your brother, well . . .”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing on this planet anymore if I don’t go after them with you,” Luis said.

  Michael nodded. “There we are then. You go talk to Osorio, and I’ll try and find Sittenfeld.”

  Luis got to his feet and headed for the door. “I’ve got morning Mass and then classes to teach all day tomorrow. I’ll drive over as soon as that’s over.”

  “Sounds good. Be safe, Father.”

  “You too, Michael.”

  As Luis left, Michael wished he’d found something better to say. He knew his association with Father Chavez was a marriage of convenience. He got access to cases he might not have otherwise, and Luis had the ear of someone who could get things done on an official level when he uncovered them. That the priest hadn’t blinked when Michael said he’d been fired made him think Luis had at least some faith in Michael’s own abilities rather than those of his office.

  This gave Michael an idea. He grabbed for his phone, held it in front of one of the numerous pages he’d printed from Gennady’s drive at his old house, and took a photo. He scrolled through his contacts list, found the right e-mail address, attached it to a blank note, and sent it off to someone he thought could help.

  Then he passed out.

  Oscar stared at the mixing bowl, knowing he’d screwed up. Helen had decided the kids should stay at home from school, given that their father was all over the news and they were rather freaked out. He’d let her sleep in, saying he would make breakfast, but had already used regular white flour instead of whole-wheat flour for the children’s pancakes.

  Helen would kill him.

  He’d been making a double batch, so he’d also used up all the eggs and milk. He couldn’t start over.

  “Are the pancakes rea
dy yet?” Denny asked over the blare of the television.

  “In a sec,” Oscar called back.

  The kids were watching their second animated movie of the morning. Oscar had caught a few minutes of it over their shoulders and thought it was pretty funny. He’d even looked up who did the voices on his phone and was surprised to see he’d guessed right about a couple of them.

  Wait. What?

  Oscar leaned against the counter, staring at his reflection in the glass of the kitchen cabinets. He wore a tank top that revealed the legion of tattoos running up and down his arms, across his upper chest, and around his neck. Who was he that he should worry about using the wrong flour when making breakfast for kids who weren’t even his own? He wasn’t some suburban dad. He wasn’t Michael. He was Oscar Beristáin de Icaza, former Alacrán cabrón, master car thief, Echo Park OG—

  “Thank you for letting me sleep in,” Helen whispered into his ear as he felt her arms encircle his midsection, followed by a kiss on his shoulder.

  “No problem,” he replied. “I do have to get down to the shop at some point . . .”

  “Don’t worry,” Helen said. “I called in at the dealership and canceled my day. I’ll stay here with the kids. You’ve done plenty.”

  This concession wasn’t enough, though. Oscar felt something boiling up in him. He wanted to pick a fight with Helen. It didn’t matter over what. He needed to lash out and assert dominance.

  She must’ve felt this tension in his body, as she retreated.

  “Hey, I’m sorry about all the Michael stuff right now,” she said. “I can only take so much of him in our lives going forward. The bare minimum feels like too much sometimes. But that’s why it was nice to end the day with you last night—just the two of us. It was a big mess, it was exhausting, but we got through it together. Maybe tonight we’ll find a different way to relax.”

  Oscar expected a sexualized image of Helen to pop in front of his mind’s eye. When instead he visualized the night before, her body pressed against his as they fell asleep, he put his arms around her and kissed her on the lips.

  “Sounds good,” he said.

  Helen kissed him back, then retreated to the bedroom. “Used the wrong flour again, huh?” she said as she ducked past the door.

  Oscar sighed. You’ve met your match, de Icaza.

  There was a knock on the front door. Oscar hadn’t thought anyone who’d target Michael would head up his way, but he’d had a couple of his boys come up and keep an eye on the street. He didn’t exactly like having people know where he lived, either, particularly as it was no longer within his domain of Echo Park, but he’d convinced the guys it was Helen’s place, not his.

  But when he looked through the keyhole, he saw the face of the devil.

  “I already heard your footsteps,” the man said calmly through the door, his thick accent suggesting an upbringing in Southern Mexico. “Open up.”

  Oscar wanted more than anything to keep this man out of his house. Wanted to put up a wall between them if he could. But his fingers simply went to the knob, turned it, and swung the door wide.

  “Thank you,” the man said, stepping over the threshold.

  He was in his fifties, with a thick head of black hair that rose from his scalp, adding a couple of inches to his squat frame. He wore jeans, black cowboy boots, and a dress shirt. It was his face, however, that was unforgettable. With drooping jowls and sagging bags under his eyes, it looked like it was melting off his skull. His heavy eyelids gave him a sleepy Basset hound appearance, but the black eyes staring out from behind them were those of a demon.

  “Help you, man?” Oscar asked, glancing up and down the street but seeing no sign of his boys or anyone the new arrival had brought with him.

  “You’ve been looking for me,” the man said. “I thought I’d drop by.”

  “I don’t know where you get your information, man, but—”

  “You were looking into the death of Naomi Okpewho. I’m the one who killed her. So I suppose you’re looking for me.”

  The children had gone quiet. Oscar didn’t think the children could hear the man’s admission but didn’t want to chance it.

  “Why don’t we speak on the balcony?” Oscar said.

  “Okay,” the man said.

  Oscar ushered the man with the melting face, the very person he’d glimpsed on the gas station security footage he’d immediately destroyed, through the house to the balcony that overlooked Hollywood. Though he hadn’t seen anyone arrive with the man, he was under no illusion that the fellow was alone. As they walked past the sofa where Helen’s kids sat, each gave the stranger a look, then turned back to the TV. The visitor didn’t glance their way once.

  When they were on the balcony, Oscar closed the door behind him.

  “Who are you?” Oscar asked. “Maybe if we were properly introduced we could talk business.”

  “People who know my name wish never to see me face-to-face. Those who don’t, when they find out they wish they hadn’t.”

  Oscar considered making a sarcastic remark, but some distant instinctual response warned him away. Like how animals instinctively knew a rattlesnake’s rattle was bad news. This guy was that.

  “If you were anyone else, Mr. de Icaza, I’d hack off your limbs and burn whatever’s left of you alive in a barrel of oil while your family here asphyxiated on the smoke,” the stranger said. “But you have an interesting alliance with the Chinese, don’t you?”

  Oscar did. Following a crisis with the Los Angeles triad, he’d been approached about opening new avenues of distribution to hotels and restaurants for triad-controlled liquor, produce, and linen suppliers. It wasn’t the most profitable arrangement, but how this man knew about it, Oscar didn’t know.

  “What’s it to you?” Oscar asked.

  To Oscar’s surprise, the visitor laughed. He kept right on laughing, too, clapping his hands as he did. But there was no joy in the laughter, only mockery.

  “You are me,” the man said when he’d finally recovered himself. “Me before the world took everything away. My family, my friends, my dreams. Anything that made life worth living. That’s when I learned what real suffering was. But as you learn to withstand it, you also learn to inflict it.”

  The stranger nodded down the balcony toward the glass door that led to Oscar and Helen’s master bedroom. Oscar looked, perplexed, but then noticed movement inside. He crossed the distance in two steps and saw a pair of men in black masks holding the half-dressed Helen down on the bed, a knife to her throat. Her mouth was only half-covered, but she didn’t scream. He knew she didn’t want to alarm the children, but as her gaze met his, he saw nothing but pure terror.

  “What do you want?” Oscar asked, turning back to the man.

  “It’s not what I want but what you want,” the stranger said. “I don’t care if I walk out of here with my hands clean or stained with the blood of five corpses. Your triad partners would be upset, but if it came to that it would be manageable. But I am willing to let you convince me to allow you and your family to live.”

  And there it was. If Oscar murdered this man where he stood, then ran to the kitchen to retrieve the 9mm automatic he had hidden behind the refrigerator to deal with the stranger’s accomplices in the bedroom, it would be the same as if he’d killed Helen himself. There was no telling how many others there were stationed around the house, either. He’d probably be dead within minutes, if not seconds, same as the kids.

  The stranger had discovered his Achilles’ heel. He was no longer the man with nothing to lose. Now he wanted something out of this world. Helen made his life worth living.

  “I’m nothing,” Oscar said. “Go ahead and kill me. I’ve got nothing of value to offer you. Nothing you couldn’t get on your own. But that woman you’re disrespecting in there right now is different. She’s smart. She’s connected in ways you couldn’t dream. You think the Chinese care about me? Nah, they’d get themselves another Mexicano. It’s her they care about. Sh
e’s bringing them legit.”

  “Is this a threat?” the stranger asked.

  “No, not even. This is a guarantee that when you’re operating in Los Angeles and you need that local partner, I’m the one who makes sure your face doesn’t show up on some gas station CCTV camera a few exits up. I’m the one who keeps guys like me from nosing around the auto impound. And I’m the guy who makes certain your junkie gets a ghost gun that doesn’t fall apart three clips in. But also it means that when your boss or bosses need that LA hookup that goes over your and my pay grade, I introduce them to the crooked ex-wife of the city’s chief deputy DA.”

  The stranger said nothing for a moment as he seemed to ponder Oscar’s words.

  “So willing to make your wife a whore,” the man said. “Maybe there’s a future ahead of you yet. One other thing I’d like to ask you if that’s all right. This priest Michael Story reached out to—Luis Chavez. He is known to you, is he not?”

  Oscar stared at him. Finally, he asked, “What do you want to know?”

  A moment later the stranger tapped on the bedroom window, then moved to pass through the house back to the front door. Oscar waited for him to say something else but was blocked by the two men coming in from the bedroom, who followed him out.

  “Wait a sec,” he called after. “So, we have a deal?”

  The man with the melting face turned back to him, the clumps of skin hanging from his jawline shivering as he did. He said nothing but didn’t have to. Oscar closed the door, locked both locks, then raised the kick-proof jamb. He then remembered that the two men had found some other way into the house and knew the locks meant nothing.

  He raced to the master bedroom, only to find himself looking down the barrel of a gun.

  “Hold up!” he said, sliding to the floor.

  But Helen didn’t lower the pistol, keeping it aimed chest high at the doorframe, tears streaming down her face. She was on the bed with her back against the wall, a blanket wrapped around her torso.

  Oscar inched up to the foot of the bed. “Put that down,” he whispered. When Helen’s eyes remained fixed on the darkness beyond the doorway, Oscar crept up next to her. “Hey, Helen. It’s me. Come on. Look at me.”