Fields of Wrath (Luis Chavez Book 1)

by Mark Wheaton

  The man behind the steering wheel died at the scene. The one in the passenger seat died on the way to Hollywood Presbyterian. The shooter was caught three blocks from the scene and went away for life despite having been a minor when he pulled the trigger. He was killed in prison two years later.

  Nicolas had died instantly.

  Luis still remembered the day Nicolas said he should stop hanging out with Oscar and his crew. He’d laughed in his face and threatened to beat him to a pulp.

  Nicolas, forgive me.

  The truck’s engine was so loud that Luis had to scream the prayer for absolution in his mind. If this was to be his final thought, so be it. He held on to the image of his brother so tight that he almost cried out.

  The sound and the light receded. The truck had never slowed or wavered from its path. Luis waited a moment longer, then resumed his march.

  The warehouses glowed in the distance like an earthbound moon. There were a few industrial pole lights, as well as several task lights, rising over their generators to illuminate every corner of the complex, whether anyone was working there or not.

  As he neared, he saw a handful of workers loading flats onto tractor-trailers. Still, he’d need an excuse for his presence if questioned.

  I fell asleep and everybody was gone. I missed my ride back.

  He knew it wouldn’t fly if they spoke to any of the drivers, but it was better than nothing.

  He kept his head down, his hands in his pockets, and his gait even. When he looked up, his still-adjusting eyes saw everything haloed in oranges and yellows. He didn’t even realize he’d passed a group of workers until he’d walked by. He didn’t risk a look back.

  Every garage and door he passed was locked with a heavy padlock, the service doors with key locks. He had his mangled skeleton key but feared he’d be noticed. He got lucky. A service door was unlocked. He strode in like this had been his destination the whole time.

  The lights were off inside, the large space lit only by the red glow of emergency exit signs. The layout was the same as that of the warehouse he’d been in earlier that day. There were four walk-in refrigerators, but they were all off in this building. He moved carefully through the center of the warehouse, larger objects appearing in silhouette. Pallet jacks and storage bins revealed themselves as his eyes adjusted to the shadows, but no sign of Maria’s car.

  What he did find was a pry bar.

  He knew it was risky, but he would only get one shot at this. Lowering the bar to his side, he stepped out of the empty warehouse and walked back to the first locked garage door in the row. He stabbed one end of the pry bar between the shackle and body of the padlock, glanced around, then threw his weight against the other end.

  It didn’t budge. He changed the angle, manipulating the lock until it was horizontal to the ground. Then he stomped on it. This time the shackle popped right off. He set the pry bar aside and slid back the bolt. The garage door threw up a massive metallic clatter as he lifted it, so Luis only raised it a foot and rolled under.

  Though the refrigerators were on in this one, the warehouse was as empty as the first. Luis checked every corner as thoroughly as he could in the dark, then slipped back out. He popped the locks on three more garage doors before hitting pay dirt.

  This warehouse was used as storage. Stacks of wooden pallets rose to the ceiling alongside bolts of transparent pallet wrap. Forklifts were plugged in and charging overnight. But Luis’s eyes had picked out the size and shape of the car and trailer immediately. The truck that had towed it there was nowhere to be seen.

  Luis climbed onto the trailer and tugged at the ropes holding the tarps in place. They didn’t budge. He tried tearing the tarp from around the base of the car, but it held fast.

  As he made his way around the car, looking for any spot where the tarp might have met a sharp edge, his foot crunched down on something small and hard. It crumbled under his shoe. He bent and picked a pebble of safety glass out of the tread.

  He ran his fingers along the driver-side windows. Both were solid. He checked the back windshield, then moved to the front. His fingers found something sharp. Carefully, he traced the edges of a baseball-sized hole in the windshield, finding the tarp thinner from wearing against the broken glass. He tried to tear it with his fingers. When that didn’t work, he leaned all the way over and tore into it with his teeth. When he worked open a large enough gap, he dug his fingers in and pulled it apart. The material unzipped down to the hood and up to the roof, stopped only by the ropes.

  He didn’t need more.

  Though Maria’s body wasn’t inside, it was clear she’d spent the last moments of her life there. Even in the dim light he could see that the driver’s seat was bent backwards at a terrible angle and the headrest was missing. The steering wheel looked like it had been kicked off its column. The dashboard was shattered, and someone had torn the cover off the center console.

  With their fingernails, Luis realized.

  There was no mistaking the moment of great violence that had happened here. Luis said a prayer for Maria even as he watched her last terrifying moments in his mind’s eye. He wanted to tell her how sorry he was for dragging her into this. That he would bring her killers to justice. That her death wouldn’t be in vain any more than her brother’s had been.

  But his words felt empty. Really, what could he promise that didn’t sound like a lie?

  He pushed himself off the car and contemplated his next move. He’d take the information back to Michael Story, but what if the car was gone when he got back? Would Story just tell him again how sorry he was but his hands were tied?

  Damned to know the truth but unable to prove it: the fate of priests.

  Something moved. Luis froze. The warehouse lights came on and the copper-eyed man who’d assaulted him beside the tractor-trailer his first night at the Blocks stepped forward.

  “My God, look at you, Father,” the man snarled. “What is it the Bible says? ‘The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night’? What would your God think about you breaking in like this?”

  “Who do you think led me here?” Luis shot back.

  “Tough words for a dead man,” the overseer said, producing a rubber police baton. “And if you think I have any qualms about killing a priest, don’t worry. Given the number of people I’ve killed up to this point, I doubt I could be any deeper in the Lord’s black books than I already am.”

  XXVI

  The beating was short. Luis had endured much worse. It was half over before he realized that the man the men called Matachín and his boys were going at him at half strength. They obviously didn’t want to turn the unmarked warehouses into a crime scene.

  “That’s enough,” Matachín said finally, Luis in a bloody heap at his feet. “Throw him in the back of my truck.”

  Luis barely felt it when they lifted him off the ground. They carried him to the back of the truck like a load of tools or, worse, like he was already dead. He wasn’t in bad enough shape to go into shock, but he could feel himself shutting down.

  “We heard you were some hard-ass gangbanger back in the day, Padre,” Matachín said, climbing into the truck bed beside him. “You should’ve known to stay away.”

  Luis said nothing. Matachín rapped twice on the back window of the cab. The truck, followed by a second one, pulled away from the warehouses onto a dirt road.

  “The crazy thing is I didn’t recognize you last night. I guess when I saw you at the church and then behind the Whittaker woman’s house, I was looking at you through night-vision specs. But when Maria Higuera’s car was seen near the Blocks last night, it wasn’t hard to guess why. Figured if we pulled her car past the fields a couple of times, you’d emerge from the woodwork, too.”

  “You killed her?” Luis croaked, eyeing the pistol in his attacker’s belt. It was some kind of mod with a long barrel. The kind one could u
se for long-distance shooting. Like from a ridge all the way to a front driveway.

  Matachín said nothing. He jabbed lightly at Luis’s face with his boot.

  “Why don’t we be quiet for a while?”

  It wasn’t a request.

  “Where’s Odilia?”

  Matachín eyed him as if deciding whether to answer. He shrugged.

  “She was just a few doors down from yours and up a flight of stairs. Your God didn’t bother telling you any of that? You ever think he just likes fucking with people?”

  Matachín lit a cigarette and looked out into the darkness as if bored with it all. Any thought Luis might have harbored of this being an interrogation he’d walk away from evaporated. They’d done this a dozen times: snatched someone, thrown them in a truck, driven them to the middle of nowhere, and put a bullet in their head. They’d put more thought into what to eat for breakfast.

  “You’re Chavez, like Chavez Ravine?”

  “Chavez like nothing. Like Rodriguez. Like Smith.”

  “My grandparents were up in there,” Matachín said, exhaling smoke. “They had a house in La Loma. You know the story?”

  Luis did but wanted the man to keep talking, so feigned ignorance.

  “Chavez Ravine was that chunk of East LA by Echo Park. Three neighborhoods—La Loma, Palo Verde, and La Bishop. Mostly poor Mexicans, all in these run-down, dirt-floor houses going up the sides of the ravine. Some güero from the city came along and told them if they vacated they’d get first dibs on a new housing development going up there. My grandparents, God love ’em, packed their shit and left like everybody else. A few weeks later the city razed the barrio. Weeks go by, then months. No one’s saying anything. No one’s building. Where are the developments? ‘Guess what, papi and mamá? The city’s changed their mind. Dodgers are coming out from Brooklyn and they need a stadium.’ Guess where they found the land?”

  Matachín took a last puff of his cigarette, lit a second one with the tip, and tossed the first out of the truck.

  “I guess the only difference now is that companies and the city”—he indicated to himself and then over to Luis—“use us against each other now.”

  Luis thought about this for a long moment and nodded. Then he added, “My brother was killed up near there.”

  “No shit?” Matachín said. “Telling you. It’s bad news for everybody.”

  Matachín went quiet for a while after this.

  Luis knew the overseers wouldn’t do their dirty work close to home, but it seemed like hours had passed. He stared up at the stars, idly wondering if anyone was staring back.

  They moved from a gravel road to one of packed earth. Though on his back, Luis could tell from the lack of trees and the dust kicked up by the truck that they had left the farmable land behind. This was the desert.

  “Almost there,” Matachín said idly, lighting a third cigarette.

  The truck slowed as it bumped onto an incline. Luis slid toward the tailgate before Matachín stopped his progress with his boot. They wound up a hill. Luis saw boulders and cacti off the driver’s side of the truck. His heart rate, which he’d struggled to contain, accelerated.

  He banished a thought of Nicolas. When he’d conjured him before, it was because he needed his forgiveness. He didn’t want to think of his brother as a witness to this.

  The incline flattened out, and the trucks came to a stop. Matachín dropped the tailgate and hopped out, barely looking at his captive. It was as if he knew Luis wouldn’t run. Not now. He grabbed Luis under both arms and dragged him out of the truck bed.

  “Walk on your own,” he said.

  Luis looked around. There was an old fire tower in front of the trucks, as well as a shack tucked into the nearby rocks. Beyond that an endless stretch of darkness. He could only get a sense of how high up they were from where the star field met the land on the horizon. He glanced to the top of the hill, where it formed a dome like a basilica.

  The other men stayed behind Matachín as he guided Luis toward the base of the fire tower. Someone had dug a large hole. Luis realized what it was meant to contain.

  “I guess you have no reason to fear what comes next,” Matachín commented.

  Luis’s leg was in motion before Matachín finished his sentence. With his right foot planted firmly in the soil, he fired the heel of his left into the overseer’s left kneecap with tremendous force. It snapped like a dry branch. Matachín fell forward as Luis turned around and grabbed the pistol from the crippled man’s waistband. Luis made note of its overlong barrel. This weapon was designed for distance.

  Luis only needed it to shoot a target two feet away.

  The first round tore through Matachín’s heart, the second his face. The men behind him reacted quickly, but Luis was faster. He shot a second man in the hip, a third in the arm. By the time answering rounds were flying back at him, Luis was rolling to the hip-shot man and grabbing his gun. He shot a fourth in the gut, raised the second pistol, and aimed in the direction of the three still standing.

  “Take one truck and go!” he shouted. “I won’t fire.”

  The arm-shot man managed to shoot back at him, but Luis shot him twice in the chest. One of the remaining gunslingers tried to aim, but Luis sent a bullet into his throat. As the man sank to his knees, blood sheeting out of the wound, the will to fight ebbed from the others. Luis scanned the remaining men until he settled on the only one whose eyes weren’t clouded with rage and adrenaline.

  A look of mutual self-preservation passed between them. They could either die in seconds or reach a silent accord.

  “Let’s get out of here,” the gunman barked at his comrades, lowering his gun.

  “He’ll shoot us!”

  “I won’t,” Luis said, trying to sound steady even as he kept his guns trained on the overseers. “Get the wounded into the truck and get the fuck out of here. I won’t shoot.”

  It was over. As Luis shielded himself behind a boulder, the survivors hauled their friends into the bed of the second truck as efficiently as they could. When they stepped toward Matachín, however, Luis waved them off.

  “Not him.”

  No one batted an eye. A few seconds later they were gone.

  After counting out four full minutes, Luis moved to Matachín’s body. Blood gurgled from a hole in his jaw as his eyes rolled around, unable to fix on anything. His skin had paled and his limbs had gone limp.

  “Gnh . . . gnh . . . ,” the overseer muttered.

  Luis’s anger was gone. He knelt beside the man and took his hand.

  “O Lord Jesus Christ, most merciful Lord of Earth, we ask that you receive this man into your arms . . .”

  Matachín’s sightless eyes struggled to locate him as Luis continued the last rites.

  “Do you have anything to confess?”

  Matachín whispered something into Luis’s ear, but he couldn’t make out the words. He absolved the dying man of his earthly crimes, recited the prayer of universal thanksgiving, and moved on to the final benediction.

  “And thus do I commend thee to you, O Lord, in everlasting peace. A-men.”

  He crossed himself and took the overseer’s hand, but it was cold. He waited until his beating heart had stilled before going through his pockets. Finding a small key, he went to the shack and tried it on the padlock. It snapped open. He dragged the dead man’s body into it and locked it back up.

  He returned to the truck that had brought him here, slid behind the wheel, and began the long trek back to civilization.

  When his ringing cell woke him at four in the morning, Michael assumed it was bad news. Good waits for first light. Bad can’t wait to unburden itself.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “The car they killed Maria Higuera in is at an unmarked warehouse facility out in Ventura County. I can give you the coordinates.”


  Jesus Christ, Michael realized. The priest.

  “Maria is dead?” he asked, sitting up straight. “The fire was all over the Internet. But the reports said the bodies found in the shack were both male.”

  “They buried her elsewhere. I know where.”

  “The Marshaks?”

  “No, the army of former gangbangers the Marshaks use to keep their workers in line.”

  “You can tie them together?”

  “No, but I can give you the end of the thread that unravels the whole thing, starting with Annie’s killer and the possible murder weapon. I can also give you the guy who gave the order.”

  A chill ran up Michael’s spine, but of excitement, not fear. If he wanted headlines, this would do it.

  “Where are you now?”

  “I don’t want to say. I’ll have the physical evidence delivered to your office in the next few hours. But right now you’ve got to get to that car. I’m also sending you coordinates for two other locations you’re going to want to add to your raids this morning.”

  “Raids? What am I looking for?” Michael asked, grabbing a paper and pen.

  For the next ten minutes Luis told him everything he knew, from the workers that didn’t exist to the way they were brought up from Mexico. When he said that he was in the truck the killers drove, Michael had him pull the registration and read off the license plate. Luis complied, and the stack of actionable information Michael had in front of him grew higher. He considered who he’d have to call first. It would take every favor he’d ever earned to secure the warrants he needed. They’d need strike teams and marshals in multiple locations across two counties. If Luis was wrong about even one detail, this would blow up in Michael’s face.

  If he was right, however . . .

  “Okay,” Michael said as Luis finished up. “We can tie the land to the Marshaks and probably more once we get people to talk. But who’s on top? Doesn’t sound like Glenn Marshak was out there directing things.”