by Mark Wheaton
“Is this an ego thing?” Helen asked, leaning against the dining room table. “Shatter whatever illusions I might’ve allowed myself, because you realized you’d rather steal a car than work for a living?”
“If you think this is honest work, then yeah, maybe you could do with a reality check,” Oscar replied. “Steal a man’s car and there’s a chance you could get caught. Be made to pay for what you’ve done. This is just as criminal, but despite ruining someone’s life by a lot more than the price of a car, you’ll always get away with it. It’s downright”—he searched for the word—“unsportsmanlike.”
Helen glowered at him with disgust. “Oh, if there’s no danger involved, it just doesn’t give you enough of a thrill to be worthwhile? Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“You mean you’re not? Wasn’t this what you were looking for when you went trolling for some thug dick revenge back in the day?”
Helen slapped him. Hard. Oscar grinned. “There she is,” he cooed. “Do it again and maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll give you one back. That’s what you’re really craving, right?”
“Wait a minute,” Helen said, altering her tone. “What is this? This is a smoke screen. What’s really going on? What’re you not telling me?”
You know me too well.
“Not a thing, babe,” Oscar said, approaching her with all kinds of menace. “Realizing if I don’t push back now, I’m going to lose the parts of myself I like.”
There seemed to be enough truth in the statement to give Helen pause. She straightened.
“I’ve spent the last year figuring out who I am and how much I’m willing to take after so many years of letting that be decided by someone else,” Helen said evenly. “I will not, repeat not, go down that road again. Because unlike you and whatever this nonsense is you’ve decided to conjure tonight, I do know what it’s like to lose myself in a role. That will never be me again.”
Helen waited for a reply. Oscar said nothing as he leaned against the table and stared the love of his life in the eyes.
“Are you going to keep pretending this doesn’t turn you on, or do I have to carry you in that bedroom myself?” he asked coldly.
Picking up her purse, Helen moved wordlessly to the front door. Oscar was drawn to her as if being sucked into a black hole. He had to fight every fiber of his being demanding he go after her to tell her that he loved her, that she’d changed everything about him for the better right down to his DNA in such a short amount of time. That she was the only person on the planet that mattered, really mattered, to him. That she made him feel alive and he loved being in love with her.
But his old instinct for cruelty kept him rooted in place. This had to be a 100 percent, no leeway.
As Helen opened the door, she looked back one last time, staring straight into Oscar’s soul. “How can you attack what we’ve made simply because it’s less than what you might’ve dreamed of?”
Before Oscar could reply, she was out the door, the sound of it slamming behind her that of two hearts breaking.
Helen’s eyes were filled with tears before she made it to the street, but she held them back in case Oscar could see her from the window. How could she have been so wrong about him? She got behind the wheel of her car, keyed the ignition, and was halfway down the block before she had to pull over.
She had sworn she’d never cry over a man after the way Michael had treated her, but here she was. During her most forgiving moments, she silently thanked her ex-husband for making her feel so expendable and unwanted that it forced her to change things in her life. If he hadn’t been so awful, maybe she would’ve died a slow death, along with the marriage.
But he’d cheated on her, the woman had been murdered, and the killers had tried to blackmail him about it using her. She’d found out inadvertently, as he’d never said a word, never let on what was going on, and acted as if it didn’t matter to him.
Maybe it didn’t.
Oscar was right about one thing. She’d initially gone to bed with him, at least mentally, to get back at her husband. That it became so much more had surprised her. But just when she got comfortable, here he pulled the rug out from under her. He might try to apologize down the line, but what was said couldn’t be unsaid.
As she wiped her tears, she realized that she didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t have a home anymore. Everything was in their house on Outpost. There was still the Bel Air house, but it was being renovated. It was a mess. At least the kids were with Michael for the next three days while she figured out her next move.
She angled her car back onto the road and drove in the direction of West Hollywood. There was a hotel there, L’Ermitage, that had one of the best spas and in-room masseurs in the city. She rang the front desk, made a reservation, then texted her assistant at the dealership and explained that a family emergency had arisen and she wouldn’t be in for a couple of days, though she would be available by phone.
She then turned off her phone, tossed it in the cup holder, and began the mental process to reinvent herself yet again.
Given the late hour, Luis didn’t expect to find anyone waiting for him when he disembarked from his plane at LAX. So it was a welcome surprise when he spotted the diminutive silhouette of St. Augustine’s seventy-one-year-old administrative assistant/laywoman, Erna Dahlstrang, seated near the baggage carousel with a copy of The Hidden Face open in her lap.
“How’s the book?” he asked.
“The introduction is so peevish, so male, that I almost wanted to throw it away,” she admitted. “I’m glad I didn’t, though.”
She rose and put her arms around Luis, who returned the embrace. “Welcome back, Father Chavez. You seem intact.”
“That’s one word for it,” Luis said. “How are you?”
“Never better now that you’re here. We’ve heard so many rumors about you that it’s a blessing to see you in the flesh.”
“I figured you kept things in order, no?” Luis asked.
“I do what I can, but it’s a man’s ecclesiastical order. A woman, even a well-intentioned one, can only make you fellows get out of your own way for so long.”
“I’ve missed you, Erna.”
“And I you, Father Chavez,” Erna said as she walked Luis away from baggage claim and out to the parking garage across the street. “I have had two phone calls while sitting here. One a reminder that the archbishop wishes you to stop by his offices this week at your convenience. He would like to speak to you.”
“And I to him,” Luis agreed. “As soon as humanly possible.”
“The other was from an Oscar de Icaza. He asked you to call him the moment you arrived. He has something to show you. He said it couldn’t wait.”
Luis nodded. Oscar was going to be his first phone call, too.
“Thank you for the messages. I’ll call him from the car.”
Oscar waited half an hour to make certain Helen wouldn’t return before going to his SUV, pulling up the backseats, and taking out the parts of his AR-15 to give them the once-over. Deep down he kept hoping to be illuminated by the headlights of Helen’s car, though he’d known the moment she exited the door she wouldn’t be back.
He ran his hand along the side of the cushion until he found the hidden seam, slipped a couple of fingers into it, and pulled out four magazines. He jammed one into the well, chambered a round, checked the action, then popped the round out of the breech and returned it to its clip. He then disassembled the weapon and returned it to its hiding spot.
Where they were going, no one would pay it any mind.
Luis arrived at St. Augustine’s as Father Pargeter prepared to celebrate a late Mass. There were few congregants in attendance, but Luis took the single bag of possessions he’d brought from Michoacán to the rectory, changed into his cassock and surplice, then happily hurried to the chapel.
A few heads turned as Luis entered through the vestibule rather than from behind the sacristy. Father Pargeter, who hadn’t yet begun, hu
rried over from the altar and handed Luis the Book of Gospels.
“Will you process with us?” Father Pargeter asked.
Luis enthusiastically agreed. He took the book, elevated it over his chest, and, as the organist began to play, stepped forward behind the acting thurifer as they moved up the aisle to lead the procession to the altar. Luis then served as lector, reading the first prayer, then sat as Father Pargeter moved to the pulpit.
It was reinvigorating. Hearing the voice of God meant Luis didn’t only feel human again, he felt like a vessel, a priest. A man with a vocation. When the Mass was over, he went to the parish office, grabbed the keys to the ’84 Caprice, and headed out. He knew the congregants had questions, but there’d be another time and place.
He hadn’t been to a place Oscar called home since they were kids. If he’d had to meet with his old friend in recent years, it was always on neutral ground, like Oscar’s place of business or the church. Oscar made no effort to include Luis in his personal life, but it wasn’t as if Luis wanted to come over for Sunday afternoon barbecue and beer anyway.
He’d texted Oscar to say he was back, only to have Oscar text back an address. The implication was clear. Come now.
As he drove up into Hollywood, he was surprised to find Oscar living in that part of the city. Though geographically near to East LA, it was still perched high and away in the hills. The distance between it and their childhood neighborhood, though only a few miles, might as well have been an ocean.
After he parked, he heard music wafting in from somewhere close by.
“Hollywood Bowl,” said Oscar from somewhere in the darkness. “A jazz singer and her band. Figure it’s almost over, but pretty nice, huh?”
Luis’s eyes adjusted, and he saw Oscar sitting on the curb nearby, drinking a beer.
“Still, it’s considered noise pollution, so people who live up here get free tickets to a bunch of shows,” Oscar continued.
“You going?” Luis asked.
Oscar scoffed. “Can you see me at the Bowl with Helen, her kids, and a picnic basket, like some fat postal worker and his schoolteacher wife?”
Luis was taken aback. Not by Oscar’s words but the actual longing he heard behind them. That was exactly what Oscar wanted.
“What am I doing here?” Luis asked. “Where is Helen?”
“I faked a fight to get her to walk out on me forever. We were each other’s biggest liability whether she’d want to admit that or not. Next question?”
Luis realized that Oscar was very, very drunk. This would not go well. He then saw that the doors to Oscar’s SUV were open, the lights in the house all off.
“Are you going somewhere?” Luis asked.
“Yeah, same place as you.” Oscar got to his feet and nodded back to the house. “Easier to see this on the big screen,” Oscar said. “Follow me.”
Luis hesitated, then dutifully followed his old friend up the sidewalk and into the house hanging from the cliff. As he glanced around the kitchen, living room, and to the balcony beyond, Luis marveled at how a young man who’d seemed so at home in a grease-stained garage could live in such a house.
“Over here,” Oscar said, indicating a smart television mounted on the wall.
Luis waited while Oscar fumbled with a remote control. When he brought up the screen of his iPhone, he typed in a long series of numbers into the search box. A video popped up, the timer in the lower right indicating it was four minutes long.
“What is this?” Luis asked.
“Just watch,” Oscar said as he hit “Play.”
The screen filled with the image of a two-story house in the middle of a desert. There was a small wall around the backyard, but a pool was visible, as the camera was on a rise. From the style of the house, Luis figured it either down in Imperial Valley, California, or somewhere in Northern Mexico.
“Somebody sent this to me,” Oscar said. “Interesting, no?”
“Not yet,” Luis replied.
“Watch.”
An elderly man and woman emerged from the back of the house. The man wore a robe, the woman a sort of gray nurse’s uniform. She walked him to the edge of the pool, helped him out of his robe, then took his elbow as he moved down the pool’s steps into the water.
But Luis didn’t need to see any more. The moment the old man appeared, Luis had recognized him.
It was Bishop Emeritus Eduardo Osorio.
XXII
“When was this taken?” Luis asked, incredulous. “It’s got to be old, right?”
Oscar fast-forwarded the video. Osorio’s dog paddled from one end of the pool to the other, looking like a petulant child forced into chores. The angle then panned to the house’s driveway, where a Range Rover stood.
“That’s a new model,” Oscar said. “I ran the plates. They were issued six weeks ago. When I checked the video’s time stamp, it matched. It’s recent.”
“But I don’t understand,” Luis exclaimed. “I saw him dead. They buried him.”
“And this would be the first time in the history of the LAPD where a couple of rogue cops helped out on a staged crime scene, right? And I looked it up. It was a cremation, not a burial. It looks like you were meant to see what you saw.”
One of the missing pieces suddenly fell into place for Luis. Why Munuera stabbed him but missed killing him. He was meant to be a witness, not a corpse.
“Who have you shown this to?” Luis asked.
“You’re the first,” Oscar said. “I was tempted to show it to Michael Story, but he’s back to being a pliable servant to his masters.”
“Meaning?”
Oscar told Luis what he’d seen on the news earlier. Luis was stunned. He didn’t imagine the banks would suffer any more than the cartels from this investigation, but after all of Michael’s bluster a fine felt like a joke. People had died. Many people. But Luis wasn’t in the business of what could be proven in a court of law. What he cared about was the truth, and this he now knew.
“Who sent you the video?”
“I don’t know. And I mean that. I have absolutely no idea. But given that Apple videos not only give a time stamp when created, they log GPS coordinates of where they were made, the location won’t be hard to find.”
A single witness to tell the tale. If they could get to Osorio, force him to come back and confess his role, it probably wouldn’t change a thing with the bank fine, but it could be the first step in bringing the church’s role to light.
“When do we leave?” Luis asked.
“Right now. Got too many questions for the man, you know? Like if this Sittenfeld guy didn’t have anything to do with Munuera and his men, then who sent them up to my house?”
And why did Father Belbenoit have to die? Luis thought.
“You want a gun?” Oscar asked. “Might not be pretty down there, and I’ve got a 9mm in the house if you want to borrow.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“Then let’s get going.”
The house from the video turned out to be just on the other side of the US-Mexico border a few dozen miles east of Tijuana. It was some of the roughest territory in Northern Mexico to get to, not only due to the poor roads and desert conditions. It was also a prime area for traffickers of both humans and drugs, who might not want witnesses to their activities.
In the heart of that wilderness was Bishop Osorio, though Luis still found this hard to believe. A part of him still thought the footage must be some kind of trick meant to lure him and Oscar back under the border into some elaborate trap. But as the cartels had proven as adept at killing people on the streets of Los Angeles as on those of Huetamo, it didn’t make sense.
Though he’d been drinking, Oscar insisted on driving.
“If there’s anyone out there waiting for us, I trust myself behind this wheel, not you. No offense.”
Luis could see Oscar murdering Bishop Osorio without so much as a second thought.
Depending on the outcome of his own conversation with th
e bishop, Luis wondered if he’d hesitate before trying to stop him.
At some point Luis fell asleep, only to be nudged awake by Oscar when they reached the border.
“Let’s get that collar front and center,” Oscar said, pointing to Luis’s throat.
Luis straightened. They hit the inspection lane and crossed to the RFID Ready Lane. Oscar extracted a pair of passport cards from his pocket.
“Who thinks of everything?” Oscar asked.
The Mexican customs official barely glanced at the cards, told Oscar to make sure he got a tourist permit for the ride back across, then sent them on their way.
“A ride like this, California plates and licenses, and a priest,” Oscar gibed. “If I was working that job, I’d know something was up!”
“What happens if they run your card on the way back?” Luis joked. “Got any late court fines or warrants?”
“Maybe Oscar de Icaza does, but Oscar Fuentes?” Oscar said, holding up the license. “A single moving violation three years back. Paid it the second the ticket hit the mailbox.”
Luis chuckled. When Oscar covered his bases, he covered all of them. It was almost funny enough to make him forget they were on a mission of revenge.
They took Highway 2D out of Tijuana and followed the signs east in the direction of Tecate. Unlike the endless sprawl of Mexico City, Tijuana seemed to end abruptly, turning into rocky desert scrub and mountains. The highway had been blasted through the rocks, revealing rainbows of sediment rising on either side of the road.
But they’d only entered the mountains when Oscar tapped on his phone’s GPS. “It’s off a spur to the north up here. There’s a wide valley between mountains. The house is out on the rocks there. Bad news is there’s only one road in. If they’ve got eyes on us out here, we’re going to have to hoof it the rest of the way.”
Luis nodded. Oscar took the next left on what looked more like a path cut by water coming down from a nearby peak. They wound up the road higher and higher, until they came to the promised high plateau. Oscar killed the headlights after about a hundred yards and drove off the main road a quarter mile before slowing to a stop.