Wages Of Sin (Luis Chavez Book 3)

by Mark Wheaton

As he raced up the stairwell, the gunfire grew louder. The shooters were using automatic weapons, both assault rifles and pistols. Luis heard mostly panes of glass shattering, followed by distant laughter. This could mean that the gunmen were more interested in tearing up the building than doing any killing, or at least that was his hope.

  When he reached the second floor, Luis found the first few rooms empty, the patients having already evacuated on their own. In one of the last he checked, however, he found a terrified young woman, heavily pregnant, cowering alongside someone he took to be her mother. The older woman had covered her daughter with a heavy blanket to keep her safe from flying glass but had been cut in the process. As blood streamed down the side of her face, her daughter was attempting to staunch the bleeding.

  When the daughter saw Luis, she panicked, then saw the collar. “Can you help?”

  Luis hurried over and saw that the pregnant woman was still in her teens. Though her mother was gritting her teeth, it was clear she was in agony.

  “We have to get out of here,” Luis said, grabbing a pillowcase. “Press this against your face.”

  The mother did so as Luis led her pregnant daughter to the doorway. The gunmen had entered the atrium below, and their automatic weapons now boomed in the hollow space like great kettle drums. As Luis tried to determine where they might go next, the power went out.

  “Oh!” the pregnant young woman said.

  “Quiet!” Luis whispered as the guns went silent.

  For a moment the entire building was as still as a graveyard. Then a voice familiar to Luis, one he’d last heard whispering into his ear as he sliced his torso with a blade, spoke from below.

  “We are here to help you,” the man with the melting face, Munuera, said. “We have learned that your district has been overrun by criminals, and the police are doing nothing about it despite knowing the identity of everyone in the gang, including its boss, Victor Canales. That changes tonight! We’re here for Armando Morales, Juan Luis Carrillo, Eloy Paez, and anyone else who has pledged allegiance to Canales. You give them to us, and we will go. Protect them, and you will die. Understood?”

  As Luis’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he peered down the hallway, looking for the door that led to the back staircase. He had no faith in Munuera’s pledge to leave once he had the men he’d named. It was up to him to get the women to safety.

  “Did you hear me?” Munuera shouted, the end of his statement punctuated by a blast of machine-gun fire that tore into the hospital’s ceiling.

  Luis turned to the two women and nodded toward the stairwell. “Let’s go.”

  Keeping as low to the ground and as close to the walls as possible, Luis and the pregnant woman helped her ailing mother hurry down the dark hall. Luis had been banking on using the gunfire as cover, but suddenly it ceased, and everything was silent again. Luis indicated for the women to go still. It wasn’t enough.

  “Up there!” a voice said.

  Bullets blasted into the short guard wall overlooking the open atrium, muzzle flash illuminating the walkway like a strobe light. Wood paneling showered over them as large chunks of the ceiling cracked apart and fell to the ground. The pregnant woman got to her knees as if to run, but Luis yanked her back down.

  “They can’t hit us,” he hissed in her ear. “Angle’s wrong. They’re trying to flush us out.”

  The young woman didn’t look any less terrified but stayed in place. Luis eyed the stairwell door, unmarred by gunfire, and nodded toward it.

  “Crawl,” he ordered.

  The older woman didn’t move. Her daughter leaned over and spoke softly to her, until she finally inched forward. The gunfire became more sporadic, aimed at all points on the upper floors. Luis figured the gunmen had lost track of them and were shooting at random. Unfortunately, he saw too late that the decorative finial on the short wall included gaps at the corners. As he and the two women passed by, they would be momentarily exposed.

  “Hurry!” he exclaimed.

  The pregnant woman saw the problem right away and crawled faster, but the gunmen below must’ve seen the movement.

  “There!” came a cry, followed by concentrated machine-gun fire.

  The mother screamed as Luis put his arms around her and carried her the last few feet through the stairwell door. As soon as they were inside, Luis looked over the rail to the lower floors. He wasn’t sure how far the stairwell was from the laundry rooms but didn’t think it was close. To make matters worse, bullets were already pinging off the bottom steps.

  “Roof,” Luis said hoarsely.

  The three hurried up the steps, Luis now hoping the door to the roof wouldn’t be locked. A few seconds later and he was rewarded to find it not only unlocked but already open. He went through first to see if any of the gunmen had made it that high, and found a handful of patients, doctors—including Luis’s—and nurses, all cowering in different spots around the roof, all waiting for the violence to end.

  Luis raised his hands to show he meant no harm, then led the women from the stairwell out to a spot alongside a large rooftop air conditioner. Luis felt someone’s eyes on him and turned to see a young man gazing at him from across the roof. He recognized him as one of the men who’d been with Victor Canales the other night. He looked much younger now, illuminated by only the moon. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. The terrified look on his face told Luis he was assuredly one of the men named by Munuera.

  The bursts of gunfire lasted for a few more minutes before the air grew quiet again. Looking past the roof, Luis tried to make out which floor the gunmen were on, based on the lightning-like muzzle flash bouncing off the nearby buildings.

  Suddenly, bullets tore up through the roof, nearly hitting them. The young pregnant woman screamed and jumped. Luis put his hand on her mouth to muffle the sound, but the clanging of footsteps on the metal stairs echoing up from the stairwell indicated that the gunmen were already on their way to the rooftop.

  Dear God. Please spare these people.

  The thought had barely formed in his head when the stairwell door swung open and two men with machine guns emerged. They were both soaked in sweat, and one had blood splattered up his pant leg. One appeared drunk, and the second one’s wild-eyed expression suggested he was fueled by something more than adrenaline.

  “Where is he?” the drunk asked, raising his gun. “We know he has to be here. He’s nowhere else.”

  Luis’s doctor stepped forward and shook his head. “It’s only patients and employees up here,” the doctor said. “No one you named.”

  The drunk raised his machine gun and fired a three-round burst into the doctor’s chest. As everyone on the rooftop screamed, the gunman walked to the mortally wounded doctor and fired a final shot into his head.

  “Who’s next?” the shooter asked, waving the gun around. “Or are you going to make me shoot you all?”

  Luis was about to rise when he caught the young man they were seeking trying to get his attention. The teenager pointed to the two shooters, signaling for Luis to hold. When they finally turned and had their backs slightly toward them, the teen motioned for Luis to stand.

  “If you must shoot someone, shoot me,” Luis said, getting to his feet.

  The two gunmen turned, raising their weapons, then paused when they saw Luis’s collar. This was all the teen needed. He launched himself at the drug-fueled shooter, grabbed his wrist, and turned the gun on his comrade. He forced the gunman’s finger to pull the trigger, and a single bullet blasted into the drunk man’s hip, sending him spinning away, his gun falling from his hands.

  The crazed gunman cursed and elbowed the teen in the face, regaining control of his weapon. “Not smart, pendejo.”

  The teen, whose nose was shattered by the first blow, ducked behind his attacker and grabbed his arms. Luis raced at the pair, only to have the gunman shrug off the teen, aim his weapon at Luis, and squeeze off a couple of shots. Luis barely had time to duck away but tripped and landed f
lat on the roof.

  The gunman squared off this time, aiming for Luis’s heart. “Te crees la muy muy.”

  Luis stared at the barrel of the gun, holding his last breath. But when the bright light exploded from the muzzle, it was aimed upwards. In a flash the boy had grabbed the gunman and yanked him backwards, sending them both over the edge of the roof. The rooftop erupted in fresh screams as Luis hurried over and saw the two broken bodies on the concrete below.

  Luis raced back to the drunk gunman, now held down by two of the doctors, and picked up his mislaid machine gun, aiming it at his head.

  “Don’t speak and don’t move.”

  The gunman complied. Luis aimed the gun toward the stairwell to await the arrival of the gunmen’s confederates, but he could already hear the distant sirens of the approaching police. Luis saw the utter lack of concern on the drunk man’s face and felt a rage growing within himself.

  The man smirked.

  Luis wondered who the police were coming to protect.

  In all, there were nine dead and twice that number wounded, including Rogelio and his cousin, who both suffered crippling injuries to their legs. That they hadn’t been executed, like the doctor, was practically a miracle in Luis’s mind.

  When the police spoke to Luis, he could tell right away that it was for show. Not because the men were necessarily corrupt but because they were terrified. The destruction at the hospital was far more than they were accustomed to dealing with. The shift in power in El Tule had come quickly, and there was no telling who or which institution would be targeted next.

  “You saw them shoot the doctor?” the federal police subinspector asked Luis.

  “I did,” Luis replied, offering no embellishment, reverting to a tactic drummed into him in childhood when dealing with police.

  “What was said?”

  “The man who shot the doctor said they were looking for someone. The doctor said there were only patients and nurses there.”

  “And then he was shot?”

  “I think so. It happened quickly. I might have gone into shock.”

  “Some said that you then rose and stood up to the men,” the subinspector said.

  “That was somebody else,” Luis lied.

  “What did this somebody else look like?”

  “No idea. It was dark.”

  The subinspector gave Luis a pained work with me expression. Luis stared blankly back.

  “Did you know the boy who carried him over the side of the building? Had you seen him before?”

  “No,” Luis said.

  Knowing it was a lie, the subinspector stared hard at Luis. Luis said nothing. Without a word, the subinspector walked away.

  Luis tried to track down the pregnant woman and her mother but was told by a nurse they’d been driven to a hospital in Uruapan.

  “Near where they got Canales,” the nurse added.

  “What do you mean?” Luis asked.

  “10K,” the nurse replied. “Canales’s boys were caught unaware by the attack and scattered. That’s why some of them even ran here. But Victor got tipped off and was on his way to Morelia when they ran him off the road, shot the two guys with him, and carted Victor away.”

  Without the nurse saying it, Luis knew exactly what this meant. He’d be tortured to death, his body likely to be found in horrifying condition at a later date. Whatever they eventually interred would be a horror show.

  “You know he’s got one of those elaborate mausoleums waiting for him in Morelia,” the nurse said, her voice dipping lest she be accused of talking out of school. “He had it built last year. Showed me a picture once. Very pretty. He knew this day would come.”

  Luis nodded. But his worry had been for Victor’s father rather than Victor himself.

  Setting out for San Nieves, Luis found half the town in the street outside the hospital. They all wore the dazed expression of the walking wounded. They might not have been in the building during the gun battle, but they understood what it portended. War had come, and the first strike had been at the one place they’d believed they might be safe.

  For the umpteenth time Luis wondered how anyone could live under conditions like this. The answer came to him immediately. It wasn’t so different from the lies he lived, proselytizing when he couldn’t even hear the voice of God anymore. They faked it, too. Pretended like everything was going along as normal when it was anything but.

  Like Father Arturo.

  Luis closed his eyes. How could he have accused Father Arturo of doing exactly what he had done? The pain of this humiliation made him wince. He was a fool.

  When he reached the church, he found the chapel doors locked. The back door was locked as well. He considered the idea that Father Arturo might’ve gone elsewhere to pray but then spied the priest through a window. He was on his knees in front of the altar, arms outstretched, face skyward, weeping. There was a gun on the floor a few inches away.

  Scrambling to grab a screwdriver from the now-empty construction site, Luis went to the back door, stuck it between the jamb and strike plate, then stomped downwards on the handle. The jamb cracked and Luis pushed the door open the rest of the way. He hurried down the narrow hallway to the chapel, only to find a stricken Father Arturo pointing the gun at him.

  “It’s me!” Luis said, ducking away.

  Father Arturo stared at Luis without recognition for a moment. He lowered the gun. “You broke in?”

  “I can fix the door,” Luis said. “I feared for your safety.”

  Father Arturo eyed the gun, then set it aside. “I can endure anything but this,” the older priest said. “I don’t know what I’d do if they hurt him.” When Luis looked at the gun, the priest shook his head. “Not that,” Father Arturo added.

  “I wanted to apologize for what I said yesterday,” Luis began. “You were right. I have no idea how you survive all of this. I had no right to judge you.”

  Father Arturo nodded idly. “No, you did not. But what does it matter now?”

  “I don’t know,” Luis said. “But I will pray for your son.”

  “You were on the roof when the Morales boy grabbed the gunman?”

  “I was. He saved the lives of everyone on the roof. It was maybe the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “I’m glad he saved the patients, but if you’re trying to convince me that my son might share some similar last shred of humanity, save your breath,” Father Arturo said. “Victor’s heart is black. Do you know how many coffins I’ve prayed over filled by his bullets? But he’s my child. There was time for him to repent. If he goes to God as he is, unrepentant and unsaved, I have failed him in every way possible. So I pray that he is returned to me long enough to save him, but not so long one more person dies in his wake. If that is something you can pray for, then join me.”

  PART III

  XVII

  When Luis exited San Nieves, he walked the three blocks to the clothing store where his father had bought him the clothes he’d worn to the picnic the week before. When he’d gone to retrieve his belongings in his hospital room, he’d found a short note with a phone number at the bottom of it, along with the name of the store, instructing him to call.

  As the shop owner guided him to a quiet spot in the store’s tiny back room, Luis knew without dialing who would be on the other end of the line.

  “Is this Lazarus?” Michael Story asked after picking up following ten rings. Luis said nothing. “I remember reading somewhere that Lazarus was Jesus’s brother-in-law, if you believe he married Mary Magdalene and was more ill than dead when Jesus of Nazareth went to raise him from the dead. You could argue that death might have been preferable to living as a resurrected in-law of Christ with some sort of obvious brain damage.”

  Luis continued to say nothing. Michael sighed.

  “At least tell me this wasn’t you last night,” Michael said. “The hospital shooting down there.”

  “That wasn’t me last night,” Luis said.

  “I
knew it was you!” Michael exclaimed. “If there’s shit in the road, you’ll step in it.”

  “I was going to call you,” Luis said. “I’ve found at least a piece of what we’ve been looking for.”

  “I’m sure you have if you’re igniting cartel wars,” Michael said. “And I think I’ve got the other big piece here. All that’s missing are the pieces that connect the two. But I have a pretty good idea of where to look.”

  They traded information for the next twenty minutes. Luis had questioned his role in all of this, but the shooting at the hospital the night before solidified his resolve. God wasn’t speaking to him in the traditional sense, but his hand was clearly present. His response to Luis’s question was to demonstrate again how monstrous the cartels were, whether they were run by Victor Canales or operating under the orders of the man with the melting face and his band of 10K-ers. If there was anything to be done to stop them, he had to do it. “After we identified the church as the go-between, we’ve gone back through—”

  “We?” Luis asked.

  “Myself, Gennady Archipenko, and your old friend Miguel Higuera.”

  Luis was surprised to hear Miguel’s name but didn’t say anything. It was the murder of Miguel’s uncle the previous year that had sent Luis undercover into the farm fields. Miguel’s mother was later killed by the same people. Whether Luis could’ve prevented this or not, the boy owed him less than nothing. He had no idea why he’d be helping the chief deputy DA.

  “Go on,” Luis urged.

  “Anyway, we’ve gone back through Sittenfeld’s correspondence over the years with that information in mind. So far we’ve identified a handful of priests associated with the Mexico City archdiocese, including two bishops and a cardinal, from whose accounts money was transferred up to Sittenfeld’s bank from Mexico. The problem is these are a smattering of what look like tests, barely a quarter of a million dollars all told. Sittenfeld knew how to obliterate his tracks on this end. So we need access to the accounts of the priests themselves.”

  “And you can’t hack the archdiocese?” Luis asked.