Wages Of Sin (Luis Chavez Book 3)

by Mark Wheaton

  “How could I not?” Raul said. “I’d have to be blind.”

  Oscar nodded. Time to lower the boom.

  Raul Bega ran four family-style Mexican restaurants that he’d inherited from his parents. Theirs was a celebrated Chicano success story. They had as many photos of themselves with movies stars and political figures on the walls of their flagship restaurant on Alvarado as they did laudatory plaques and certificates from the city. Raul Bega Sr. had passed away five years ago. The widowed Mrs. Bega had retired to a hillside estate in La Jolla, where she enjoyed the attention of a harem of personally selected boy toys. Raul, meanwhile, had run the family business he’d inherited into the ground. With a lack of vision and no head for figures, he’d spent money on all the wrong things and never the right. He was now $8 million in the red.

  Then came Oscar. The solution he offered Raul was a partial buyout by Oscar’s “silent partners,” a restructuring of the restaurants’ debt, and a move to new vendors, from food services to liquor to linens, owned by his new partners. This unexpected lifeline was the only thing keeping Raul Bega from bankruptcy.

  The restaurant’s front door opened. Oscar swiveled in his seat with alarm, only to see a pair of cooks arriving for the evening shift.

  “Just in time!” Raul piped up. “Can you prepare something for my guest? He’s helping with our revised business model.”

  The cooks knew exactly who Oscar was and seemed to regard the news that he was involved in the business with trepidation. Yes, they’d keep their jobs, as the restaurant wouldn’t fail, but they’d work for a gangster. Oscar nodded—you do your jobs and I’ll do mine—then shook his head to Raul.

  “No time for food, but I thank you,” Oscar said. “I grew up eating at your family’s restaurants. Always a special occasion. I am thrilled for the opportunity to return the kindnesses your parents showed me.”

  The cooks seemed surprised at Oscar’s deferential tone, then headed back to the kitchen, likely to begin the grass fire of gossip born from what they’d witnessed. Raul beamed back.

  “Have your partners eaten here?”

  “They have not, but I look forward to bringing them,” Oscar said, trying to imagine his triad pals out for a night of margaritas and bottomless guac. “There is one last point to the deal that we need to discuss.”

  “Oh?” Raul said, impressing Oscar with how quickly he detected danger. “Don’t tell me they wish to increase their ownership share?”

  “Not at all,” Oscar assured him. “Their exposure here is the maximum they would ever take in the restaurant business.”

  “Then what?” Raul said, relieved. “As I said, you’re family now, so ask anything.”

  “I’m glad you said that,” Oscar began. “My partners would like you to introduce them to your brother.”

  Raul looked sick. His younger brother, Raphael, had eschewed the restaurants his family owned to strike out on his own. He’d started a restaurant in Century City a few years back, dedicated to authentic Oaxacan cuisine, which, despite fantastic reviews, shuttered within a year. He’d started a different one, this with an expanded menu, down in Hermosa Beach eighteen months later. It closed two years later. But his next one, built in West Hollywood near the Pacific Design Center, took off. Six months after it became LA’s “it” spot, he opened a satellite version with the same menu in Fairfax. Two years later there were six in Los Angeles, a seventh in San Francisco, and a branch being opened in Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

  Unlike his parents or older brother, Raphael didn’t want to be the face of his restaurants and took no photos with politicians or celebrities. He did, however, donate to their campaigns and causes.

  “My brother and I do not exactly see eye to eye when it comes to business,” Raphael said carefully. “He does things his way and I—”

  Run your restaurants into the toilet, Oscar thought.

  “Of course,” Oscar interrupted, nodding. “I know this and my partners know this. Your brother doesn’t need us any more than, to be completely frank, we need him. What we’re talking about is one meeting, in which we could pitch a streamlined strategic partnership that would take his businesses one step closer to maximizing their profitability.”

  It wasn’t a dishonest pitch. The triad supplied the same brand of oven cleaner that Raphael’s current vendor did. Delivered the same bulk produce and meats and spices from the same wholesalers and laundered tablecloths, aprons, napkins, kitchen towels, and uniforms in the same fashion. Only, they cut out the middleman by owning their own trucks and, well, using cut-rate, fresh-off-the-boat Chinese illegal labor, and had determined that they could save Raphael Bega easily half a million dollars a year.

  All Bega had to do was accept that his new partners, at some point, might be tangentially implicated in a criminal enterprise he’d otherwise know nothing about.

  What surprised Oscar the most was that the triad had needed little convincing, given their more typical reticence.

  You get Raphael Bega on board, and I’ll be able to pitch you to anybody in the city. No more taco stands and burger shacks. I can walk into Mastro’s and tell them they’re idiots for not working with you.

  He proceeded with their almost immediate blessing.

  But even as the words “maximizing their profitability” escaped Oscar’s lips, he knew this wasn’t who he was. He belonged under the hood of some car back in Echo Park. Sure, he enjoyed watching Raul Bega squirm. But the other nonsense? Never.

  Oscar waited for Raul to call his brother. That was part of the deal. It had to happen right then. The call was also to include nothing about Raul’s deal. Only raw numbers and what Raphael could gain by this arrangement. Oscar’s job was to get Raul out of the way, set that first meeting with Raphael, and close that deal without the older brother screwing it up.

  “He wants to talk to you,” Raul said, face full of shame, as he handed Oscar the phone.

  “Hey, how are—?” Oscar began.

  “These numbers you had my brother recite over the phone even remotely accurate?” a blustering Raphael Bega barked.

  “I can show you the breakdowns but also provide you with a list of our satisfied partners.”

  “I know who you are,” Raphael said. “And I’m pretty sure I know what you’re promising my brother. If it’s worth all that to get some deal in front of me, how stupid would I be to not to hear you out?”

  “Fantastic,” Oscar said. “I’ll arrange a time for you and me—”

  “Nope,” Raphael shot back. “You’re just the guy who conned my brother. I want to see your bosses. Got it?”

  Oscar resisted every impulse to throw the phone through the front window. “Got it,” he said.

  “Have them call me,” Raphael said, then hung up.

  Oscar looked across the table to Raul and didn’t feel so high and mighty anymore. They were both middlemen now. Raul shrugged, but Oscar saw pride returning to his features.

  “You screw this up, and the next time your mother goes to get her Botox injected there’ll be something far worse in that needle,” Oscar threatened.

  “Far worse than anthrax?” Raul snipped.

  Oscar kicked the table over. The crash of the settings and shattering glasses was nothing compared to the look of fear on Raul’s face. The two cooks appeared in the kitchen doorway, one holding a carving knife. Oscar pulled his jacket and showed that he had a 9mm automatic in his waistband, one which he was licensed to carry. The cooks retreated, and Oscar went to the front door.

  Once out in the sunlight, Oscar squinted up into the sky and waited for a cascade of bullets to tear his body apart. When this didn’t happen, he took out his phone, and texted his driver—one Helen had insisted on hiring following their home invasion—to ask where the hell he was.

  Immediately after hitting “Send,” three dots appeared on the screen, signaling the imminent excuse to come. As Oscar moved to put the phone in his pocket, message unread, he picked up movement in his peripheral visio
n. He whirled around, hand on his gun, only to see Michael Story approaching from the parking lot.

  “I just need a minute,” Michael said.

  “Where’s my driver?”

  “I’m having a friend from LAPD detain him in case anyone’s got eyes on you right now. No one’ll think you were voluntarily talking to law enforcement.”

  “How thoughtful,” Oscar said, but knew it was good thinking.

  “Where’s Luis Chavez?” Michael asked.

  “Like I’d tell you.”

  “We were working together when he got stabbed,” Michael explained. “It was in its early days, but Luis felt there was enough to go on to pay a visit to discuss the matter with Bishop Osorio.”

  “Discuss what?”

  “I have reason to believe someone within the Catholic Church has been helping launder Latin American drug money through Los Angeles banks for the past thirty-odd years.”

  Oscar stared at Michael. He couldn’t believe his ears. “The church is laundering drug money?”

  “Sadly, it’s not without precedent,” Michael said. “Just last year the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority closed something like five thousand fake accounts at the Vatican Bank being used for nefarious purposes. There was evidence of possible money laundering and tax evasion tied to the Sicilian Mafia after they arrested all those priests in 2012. And it wasn’t too many years ago that the pope’s banker, Roberto Calvi, had bricks put in his pockets and a noose around his neck before being thrown off a London bridge while on the run for potentially laundering millions through the Vatican’s banks.”

  “Yeah, but that’s Italy,” Oscar said. “You really think the archdiocese of Los Angeles is in on this? I mean, I’m not particularly devout or anything . . .”

  “No, but I think the one in Mexico City might be. We’re beginning to associate individual priests and parishes with cartel money transfers. The problem is that we can’t then see where the money goes on from there. It’s completely closed off to me. My associates couldn’t even get a foothold into the financials of the archdiocese. Luis, on the other hand, could do it easily.”

  Oscar scoffed. “How many times can you and Luis play Hardy Boys without one of you getting killed? Helen told me you’d been canned. And yeah, I’m sorry about your girlfriend, but that’s what happens. The cartels aren’t a joke. They’re not some white-collar criminal hiding in plain sight that fears getting busted for tax evasion. These guys are killers who’d rather shoot you than listen to an excuse. They don’t screw around.”

  “I know,” Michael said. “But if the church is acting as a middleman for the cartels, getting at them could be a real way to strike at the drug lords. This could be billions. Even better, we could be taking down a bank or two with them. Banks that think they’re too big to be bothered with the illegality of laundering drug money.”

  Oscar thought about the man with the melting face. Would he come for Michael next? Or would Michael win the day, as he inexplicably always did, and maybe Oscar wouldn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder all the time?

  “Why do you think I know where Luis is, much less how to get in contact with him?” Oscar asked.

  “Because you care a lot about your friend,” Michael explained. “Enough to arrange to have all flight plans and records for his emergency trip down to Michoacán scrubbed. Only, the plane was sighted by the FAA and its approximate flight path recorded. Didn’t take a lot of detective work to piece together who hired it and for what.”

  “Bravo,” said Oscar. “Let’s pretend I could get word to him. You’re hardly his favorite person. What do you want me to say?”

  “That I have a line on his brother’s killer. Or more accurately, a lead on a way to find out who hired him. You got that?”

  Oscar stared at Michael in surprise, then finally managed to nod. “Got it.”

  “Good,” Michael said. “Get a contact number for him. I’m working with an old friend of his. He can make sure any of our communications are secure.”

  With that, Michael headed away. As he watched the chief deputy DA march off, Oscar tried to calm his accelerating heart rate. It had been half a lifetime since Nicolas Chavez had been buried. Enough time to convince Oscar he’d stay that way.

  How wrong he was.

  XVI

  After speaking with Father Arturo, Luis had drifted out to where his father was working. Sebastian called down to him, indicating one of the other workers.

  “This is Octavio,” he announced. “He’s invited us to dinner.”

  Luis wasn’t in the mood to socialize but nodded anyway. He waited below for the work to finish, then followed his father and the other workers to Octavio’s house, where a feast was waiting.

  “Octavio’s wife is Purepecha,” Sebastian explained, introducing Luis to Octavio’s assembled family members. “She wanted us to taste the food of her culture as well.”

  The night was warm, and they ate outside, sitting on wooden benches pulled up to long tables, picnic-style. As Luis had come to expect, dish after dish appeared from the kitchen and made its way around the table. He tried everything, eating to the point of bursting. It turned out to be the birthday of an aunt, which made Luis feel better about accepting such largess, though it was clear that Sebastian was the guest of honor.

  Toward the end of the second hour of the meal, Luis turned to his father and put a hand on his shoulder. “We need to talk.”

  As if having expected to hear something like this, Sebastian nodded idly and raised a silencing hand. “After dinner. On the walk back.”

  Luis sank back onto the bench in time to see two more platters emerge from the kitchen. He suddenly noticed that the birthday-celebrating aunt was glaring down the table. Luis followed her gaze to the woman seated beside Sebastian. Her eyes aglow, the woman, whom Luis took to be the celebrant’s sister, laughed easily, a hand on Sebastian’s shoulder. Luis looked back at the glaring aunt and recognized it for what it was: jealousy.

  While amusing, it meant what Luis had to say to his father would be that much harder.

  It was almost midnight when they finally left Octavio’s house. There had been multiple waves of good-byes, several embraces, a few promises to return, and even, Luis glimpsed, a clandestine kiss planted on Sebastian’s cheek, which was promptly returned in kind. But when they were on the road again, Sebastian turned serious.

  “So, what is it?”

  “I have told you perhaps that I am somewhere outside God’s voice right now,” Luis said.

  “You have,” Sebastian said. “And I have prayed to him to find a way through to you.”

  “Yes, but that is something of me, not him. I am at fault somehow, but I don’t know how to rectify it. The trouble is I need to understand right now how I am to enact his will.”

  “How do you mean?” Sebastian asked, face coming in and out of the orange glow of muted house lights.

  “I’m afraid the villain here is God’s church,” Luis said. “They’re not just taking donations from minor cartel enforcers. They may be actively laundering money into the United States on behalf of the major drug lords.”

  “The church? How can you be sure?”

  “I can’t,” Luis said. “Not without investigating further. But if I’m right, this could embarrass and humiliate the church, doing significant damage to its relationship with its parishioners. What I need to know from God is whether I am to pursue this or not. Too many people could be affected if I’m wrong. This cannot simply be a decision left to my heart. Will you pray on it?”

  Sebastian looked embarrassed, even befuddled. But then he nodded. “I will, Luis.”

  “Thank you, Father. Depending on what I am to do, I should tell you that El Tule might become a dangerous place for you.”

  “I know this, Luis. But I won’t leave until the last brick is laid for that school. I have to finish it. That is the task God has given me.”

  Luis nodded painfully, wishing things could be so cut and drie
d for him. They parted ways at the small apartment building that served as San Nieves’s rectory. Luis made his way back to the hospital on his own.

  “You didn’t bring any beer back, did you?” Rogelio asked as Luis entered, more to cover for Oswaldo hiding a pornographic magazine than out of a real desire for alcohol.

  “Was I supposed to?” Luis asked.

  “Always!” Rogelio replied, pausing the portable DVD player in his hands. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Luis shrugged good-naturedly before climbing into bed. “What’re you watching?”

  “No idea,” Rogelio replied. “Guy who sold it to my mother said it was a kung fu movie, but I have yet to see anyone kicked through a wall.”

  Luis laughed. He was hoping Rogelio might switch it off and let him get to sleep when the sound of gunfire erupted from outside. Luis and Rogelio dove out of their beds as Oswaldo turned his over and dropped behind it.

  “Stay down!” Rogelio said, crawling to the window. He peeked out and blanched. “They’re coming over the walls. They’re after someone.”

  The window exploded as gunfire shattered the glass. Rogelio ducked away from the shards raining down over the room. Luis scrambled behind Oswaldo’s bed as the splinters embedded themselves in his mattress.

  Vera, on her hands and knees, appeared in the doorway. “Everybody to the back of the building. The laundry. Those doors can be locked. Quickly!”

  Oswaldo nodded. “The doors are thick, too, and muffle the machine sound. Let’s go.”

  Rogelio hurried across the floor, hissing in agony as broken glass chewed up his bare feet. When he got to the far side of Oswaldo’s bed, Luis retrieved the spare wheelchair that had been brought for him and quickly helped Oswaldo lower his cousin into the seat.

  “All right, get him out of here,” Luis said as the trio emerged into the hallway, the gunfire now echoing up from within the building.

  “Where are you going?” Rogelio asked.

  “To see if any of the patients upstairs need help,” Luis said, turning to head away before the cousins could protest.