by Mark Wheaton
“Probably nine hundred rattlesnakes between us and that house,” Oscar admonished as he climbed out of the truck.
“Good thing they don’t bite their own,” Luis shot back.
Oscar laughed, then opened the back doors, taking apart the seats to remove the parts of the AR-15, which he quickly assembled. Luis looked out into the distance to where the GPS said Osorio’s house was located. There wasn’t so much as a dot on the horizon.
“We sure it’s out there?” Luis asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Oscar said, placing the shoulder stock of the machine gun against his shoulder and aiming the barrel toward the ground. “Lead on, Padre.”
The sand was hard packed, like there hadn’t been any rain for several seasons. This lulled Luis into a false feeling of safety, as if he were crossing concrete in the dark. But every several yards or so his feet sank into a loose pile, likely the byproduct of a burrowing animal, and he almost fell. As his eyes adjusted, he was able to make out the larger silhouettes of cacti and scrub, but the smaller ones eluded him.
“You’d make an awful coyote, Padre,” Oscar said.
A faint green-blue glow appeared on the horizon. As they neared, Luis saw that it was the light from the backyard swimming pool shining like a beacon in the otherwise-empty desert. He wondered how many mornings Osorio woke to find that all manner of desert animal had visited his oasis in the night. He also imagined that without the wall, a light wind coming off the surrounding cliffs would fill it so full of sand on a daily basis it would be unusable within hours.
Something skittered past to the right. Oscar raised the assault and peered down the sight.
“Jackrabbit,” he announced.
It took another few minutes to reach the house’s back wall. Luis was surprised to see it wasn’t topped with barbed wire and there was no visible security system. Didn’t mean there wasn’t one, of course. The house was dark save for a single light in a kitchen window. There were several bay windows overlooking the pool on the back of the house.
“Around front,” Oscar whispered.
Keeping low, they circled the house, only to find the driveway empty. Oscar moved to the garage and looked inside. “Range Rover’s gone. Maybe it belonged to the nurse.”
“No way he’s in there alone,” Luis said.
Oscar nodded, then pointed to a gate between the garage and house. There was a side door leading into the main house on the other side. Luis nodded in agreement.
The gate was locked. Oscar checked the safety on the machine gun and was about to use it to crack off the knob when Luis boosted himself over the five-foot wall and unlocked the gate from the other side.
“Thought you were some kind of tactical expert,” Luis said.
“Nah, watched Delta Force on cable too much,” Oscar replied, shrugging as they made their way to the house.
The side door was locked both with a door lock and a dead bolt.
“Guess we’re going in loud,” Oscar suggested.
Luis was about to ask what he meant by this when Oscar set the AR-15 to semiautomatic, fired a deafening three-round burst into the doorjamb, raised his booted foot, and kicked the door through. An alarm sounded inside the house as Oscar raced in, Luis close behind.
“Stay here!” Oscar told Luis, disappearing into the living room.
Luis complied, realizing he was in some kind of laundry room. He didn’t have any kind of weapon and found only a mop. He unscrewed the head and held the handle like a staff. His makeshift weapon wouldn’t protect him from gunfire, but it was better than nothing.
Luis heard screaming and stepped into the kitchen in time to see Oscar shoving the nurse, clad in a long nightgown, ahead of him, gun pointed at the base of her skull.
“Turn off the alarm,” he bellowed before switching to Spanish. “¡Inmediatamente!”
Clearly terrified, she stumbled past Luis, found the alarm box in the laundry room, and typed in the code. The alarm went silent, but she shook her head.
“They’ll come anyway,” she said in Spanish.
“If they really cared, they’d be here already,” Oscar replied. “Where’s Osorio?”
She shook her head. Luis moved into her sight line. “You think a priest would kill a priest?” he asked. “We need to ask him a question.”
“He’s very frail! You have to leave here. They’ll kill you both when they arrive.”
Luis shook his head. “We don’t mean you any harm. Let us see him.”
“No,” the nurse said. “If I let you up, they’ll kill me, too.”
Oscar touched the back of her neck with the still-warm barrel of the AR-15. “Sounds like you’re in a tough spot.”
The nurse shrieked and began to cry. As Luis was wondering if the situation could get any more out of hand, a voice called down from upstairs.
“Father Chavez, the woman need not come to harm,” said the unseen Osorio.
And then to the nurse: “Marisol, make some tea for my guests.”
The familiar request seemed to calm the woman. Oscar and Luis exchanged glances. Oscar sighed heavily, then moved the gun away. The woman rose and walked with purpose to the stove.
She smoothed her hair and put the kettle on the burner. Oscar silently raised his gun, as if to shoot her in the back of the head. Luis tensed and Oscar lowered it, exiting the kitchen. Luis followed. From the living room he could see a light coming from a bedroom on the second floor.
Bishop Osorio, he presumed.
“You know I’m going to have to kill her on the way out, right?” Oscar said, nodding over his shoulder.
Luis said nothing, already climbing the stairs.
Though the first floor of the house was sparsely furnished, the second floor was as opulent as a hotel suite. There were the same types of rugs, antique tables, and couches, and gilt-framed wall hangings Osorio favored in Los Angeles in a sort of common room right off the stairs. There was one bedroom that Luis took for the nurse’s room at the top of steps, with another room next to it that looked like a study. Osorio’s bedroom was on the other side of the house.
“Come in, come in,” Osorio’s voice said, leading them through the living room. “I expected you hours ago.”
Luis moved to the doorway of Osorio’s bedroom. The bed was a large four-poster affair with silk sheets of scarlet and satin blankets. The room looked less like that of a clergyman and more like a Turkish pimp’s. Notably, the many crucifixes that had decorated Osorio’s rooms back in Los Angeles were decidedly absent. There were no religious icons here.
Osorio himself was seated in a wicker chair in the corner of the room. He was lighting a cigarette, the first Luis had ever seen him smoke. He wore red silk pajamas, a red robe, and red slippers with the crossed gold keys of the first pope, Saint Peter, on them. He saw Luis eyeing the shoes and shrugged.
“Would you believe I wanted to be pope?” Osorio mused. “I would’ve been a great one, too. But I was ahead of my time. It took almost my whole life for them to seriously consider an American one, and now they’ve done it. At least I lived long enough to witness it.”
“Aren’t you dead?” Oscar said, entering the room but keeping one eye back on the stairs as if worried the nurse still might come charging in, guns blazing.
“Something like that,” Osorio said, taking a drag from his smoke. “The ecclesiastical side is at least.”
“But Belbenoit is,” Luis said. “No resurrection for him.”
“No, but he was a priest who craved martyrdom,” Osorio said, waving away Luis’s concern. “But his death is not the one you came to discuss, so let’s get on with it.”
Luis stared at Osorio for any sign of fear through the hazy cloud of cigarette smoke. There was none.
“What’d my brother have on you?” he asked.
Osorio shrugged. “I really don’t know.” When Oscar leveled his gun at Osorio, the bishop shook his head. “I’m serious. I really don’t know. There were a great many possibilities,
I’ve determined. A phone call he shouldn’t have overhead. A letter or e-mail he read. An errand I carelessly believed wouldn’t arouse his suspicion. It was my fault, that much is true. He trusted me, and it was too much of a betrayal.”
“He loved you,” Luis corrected. “You showed him the way to God. Kids like us grow up believing we’re irrelevant. You changed that for him. It never takes much.”
“For that I am sorry,” Osorio said. “It was so early in my relationship with Sittenfeld. We’d made all the arrangements, and everyone was so thankful. He and his bank were going to make money, the church, already so poor, was going to make money, and our partners in the south had finally found an avenue into the United States that made sense. It was my own version of revolution, mind you.”
“What’re you talking about?” Luis asked.
“Mexico has so long been under the boot of Western interests and governments,” Osorio explained. “Being able to support these peasant farmers at the expense of their corrupt government felt like what the church should’ve been doing this whole time.”
“Innocent people died for your revolution. Like Nicolas,” Luis said.
The bishop emeritus grinned. “And so we get to the business at hand, eh, Luis? So one of my partners chose to give you a name, my name. But not the name you wanted. Isn’t that right? Perhaps you should have been more careful about what you asked. And whom.”
Osorio’s grin widened. “Oscar,” he chided, “isn’t it time the truth finally came out?”
Luis turned to Oscar, who suddenly looked like an animal who’d walked into a trap. “Luis, I didn’t kill your brother . . .” Oscar said, lowering his gun.
“I know you didn’t,” Luis said. “A young man named Narcizo Rua did.”
“How did you find out?” Oscar asked.
“I had some help,” Luis admitted. “Why don’t you tell me how it happened?”
“Yes, Oscar,” Osorio chimed in. “Why don’t you enlighten us?”
Oscar moved swiftly to Osorio, raised the rifle butt, and brought it down on the old man’s forehead with a crack. The bishop gasped as blood seeped from a gash above his left eye. Oscar raised the gun to hit him again, but Luis grabbed the hand guard.
“Oscar?” Luis said.
Osorio’s mouth opened in a grin even as blood dribbled past his nose and through yellowed teeth.
“I was fourteen, Luis,” Oscar said, taking a step back. “The bishop came to my house. Asked me if I really was a gangbanger. I wanted to impress him, like Nicolas did. Even my dad respected the priests, and he didn’t like anybody. So, yeah, I told him I was all hard. He asked me if I knew any really bad gangsters, like killers, he could talk to. Said Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners and he wanted to start with the worst.”
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst,” Luis thought, recalling the actual scripture.
“Said he’d pay me fifty dollars and had money for my guy, too,” Oscar continued.
“So what’d you do?”
“I went looking for the biggest, baddest hitter I could find,” Oscar went on. “That was Narcizo Rua. He told me it would be the easiest money he ever made. Looking back, I’m pretty sure he knew what was going on. Like knows like.”
“And you never told me?” Luis asked.
“It didn’t mean anything to me,” Oscar said, “but maybe it made me feel like a big shot. Like Nicolas wasn’t the only kid in the neighborhood who got to see people as important as that. And I was getting in good with a bishop and an OG! But when Nicolas was killed a few nights later, I knew that cross-fire story was bull.”
Luis thought back to that night. He’d been under the Fourth Street Bridge, getting initiated into his gang. Oscar was there, too, delivering some of the most savage blows of the jumping-in while the man he’d introduced the bishop to was gunning down Luis’s older brother.
“You betrayed me,” Luis said. “I was your closest friend. What, were you jealous I had a brother or something? Thought he meant something to me in a way you didn’t?”
“I was a kid!” Oscar cried. “What was I going to say? I hated myself over that. By the time I was man enough to know how to handle it, you were gone, following in your brother’s footsteps. I tried to see it as a good thing. It wouldn’t have happened for you like that if it wasn’t for Nicolas’s death. But I knew what I’d done. I knew what it made me.”
“You never thought once that since it was the church that killed him, maybe that was information I could’ve used? Maybe if I’d known what kind of outfit I was signing up with, I might’ve had second thoughts. There were hundreds of priests in those files. They knew what happened to priests who try to say something. They killed my brother for it. And you let me join their ranks just like that? But I guess you know something about selling me out, huh?”
“What?” Oscar asked.
“To Munuera. Somebody knew when I was going over to Osorio’s and was lying in wait. Was that you, too?”
“I told him that was the one thing I couldn’t do,” Oscar admitted. “I gave him everything else he asked. Gave up every partner I work with today. But I wouldn’t betray you. Not a second time.”
Luis nodded, unsure if he should believe him. He heard a gurgling sound and turned to Osorio, whose mouth was contorted into a sickening grin as if he were enjoying all of this. But then Luis noticed his eyes clouding over.
“No, no,” Luis said, going to his side. “You’re not getting out of this so easy. You’re coming back to Los Angeles. I’ve got all the files on all the priests. And you’re going to tell the FBI, the district attorney, LAPD, everybody exactly how you put this together. That’ll be your last act on earth.”
“No, it won’t,” Osorio said, voice barely a whisper. “God has other plans for me.”
With that, Osorio’s body began to tremble, his limbs becoming rigid. The nurse, who’d come up with tea, pushed past them to Osorio’s side. She took out a phone and quickly wrote a text.
“He’s having a stroke,” she announced, moving the featherweight Osorio onto the bed.
As Luis watched helplessly, she checked his pulse, then wheeled over an oxygen tank and mask.
“If you’re still here when everyone else arrives, they’ll kill you,” the nurse told Luis.
Luis didn’t care. Osorio couldn’t die. He was their last chance. He pushed the nurse aside and grabbed Osorio’s hand. “You will die unabsolved,” Luis said. “You will go straight to hell. You won’t confess your sins.”
As the light in Osorio’s eyes began to fade, Luis still saw no sign of despair. It was as if Osorio was saying he had no fear in life, so why should he fear hell? Only, there was no triumphant smile now. Mere resignation.
“No!” Luis shouted, trying to keep Osorio awake. “God, please! No!”
Luis was panicked now. Without Osorio, the church’s role in the money laundering would never really be known. Which actual cartels were involved, which banks, and which members of the church facilitated this interaction. Was it all Osorio’s idea? Maybe some random Colombian foot soldier who’d passed the suggestion up the line until it became de rigueur for cartels looking to move money from country to country.
But most of all, it meant that there would never be justice for Nicolas Chavez.
Osorio’s breathing stopped. His heartbeat, already faint, vanished a second later. The nurse turned to Oscar, who put a hand on Luis’s shoulder.
“We have to go,” Oscar said.
“Get away from me!” Luis shouted.
Oscar’s hand retreated. Luis saw something coming down hard and fast on the side of his head but didn’t have time to react. A second later he was drifting into unconsciousness.
Luis woke up in Tijuana behind the wheel of the SUV. He was on a side street in what looked like a bad part of town. Still, no one had touched the truck, much less him.
Oscar, Luis realized. His name carries weight even here.
; He looked around for any sign of where his comrade might be, but there was no note, no sign of the AR-15 or any other weapon. Nothing but the keys hanging in the ignition and his passport card and tourist permit on the dash. He spied a disheveled man sitting on a crate at the end of the block looking everywhere except at him.
Climbing out of the SUV, Luis wandered up to the fellow, who stared back at the priest as if through a drunken haze. “Did you see where my friend went?”
“No,” the man said with a shrug. “But he told me where he was going.”
“Where’s that?” Luis asked.
“Sur,” the man said, pointing down the street. “South. Far south.”
XXIII
It was half past nine by the time Luis got back to St. Augustine’s. Erna was waiting with a message from the archbishop’s office.
“He can see you at noon,” Erna said triumphantly.
“Today?” Luis asked wearily.
“Of course! His office said that he was as anxious to speak with you as you with him.”
Luis nodded and headed to the rectory to get half an hour of sleep. On the way he called to quickly check up on his father and sent an e-mail from his phone. When he woke up twenty minutes later, there was a reply and a location, a Cuban pastry shop off South Reno in Rampart Village.
As he pulled into the shop’s parking lot half an hour later, he spied Miguel sitting at a table out front, a pink box on the table before him. Luis parked and walked over, Miguel raising half a flaky puff pastry in his direction.
“You gotta try the guava ones, Padre,” Miguel enthused. “People drive in from all over to sample them.”
Realizing he was again half-starved, Luis took a bite from the proffered strudel-looking confection and immediately understood why someone might drive all the way into the city for such a thing.
“It’s good,” Luis admitted.
“There’s more in the box,” Miguel said. “Eat up.”
“Thanks,” Luis replied, then eyed the teenager.
The last time he’d seen Miguel in the flesh, the young man practically wanted to kill him, his actions having inadvertently led to the murder of Miguel’s mother. Now he was smiling and offering him pastries. He wasn’t sure what to make of this.