“Your last what?”
My last millionth.
Chapter Eleven
Just as Parker began the drive back home, and while mulling over when he’d call Melon in Cabo, his cell phone rang.
It was a restricted number. He tensed. Was it possible that Güero would dare to call him again? He braced himself as he punched the answer button on the steering wheel. When he heard Clopton’s voice, he sighed with relief.
“It’s me. You got a sec?” she said.
“Yeah,” he replied.
“You figured out any details, yet?”
“I was just starting to. I’m thinking about—”
“I don’t want or need to hear any of it,” she said bluntly.
He nodded to himself. Of course she didn’t. “Oookay.”
“Here’s the scoop. We have a task force down that way working in conjunction with the Mexican government and the DEA. Mostly on the cartels. But they’ll have intel. Maps. And a burner phone in case you get into any trouble. Your contact will be a guy named Jim.”
Parker laughed. “Jim?”
“It’s a nice name.”
“And as generic as they get.”
“And you were expecting something different?”
“Good point. The burner phone is a nice touch, too.”
“How so?”
Parker shook his head as he stretched his neck against the stress that was just beginning to grip at it. “Um. Can you say ‘plausible deniability’?”
Clopton sounded irritated. “Again, he acts like this is his first rodeo.”
He pulled around a Prius that was laboring in the fast lane and hit the gas. “Yeah, yeah. You get any further with the case?”
She mumbled something, then replied, “We busted a few of his local cronies who won’t talk, they’re so damned afraid of this guy. So, we still don’t know what happened to the girls that were smuggled into Long Beach. But from what records we found in one of Güero’s warehouses? It looks like this guy was pulling a container a week into the Southern California area.” She took a breath as her voice grew angrier. “But even worse than that? You wanna hear it?”
“Shoot. Might as well tell the disposable guy what you can, while you can,” he half-joked.
“Oh, please. Trust me, I wish I could be the one to go after his ass and not you. I really do. It makes me sick that I can’t. But I can’t. The chickenshit ran. And, well, I got these other containers to track down, you understand?”
“I do.”
“So, do me a favor and don’t play the sacrificial hero on me. We both have a common interest. We’re both going to help each other to serve those interests. Period.”
He sighed. “You’re right. No more joking around. So. What were you gonna tell me that’s worse?”
“Alejandra. Remember that name. She’s sixteen. We found her during the warehouse bust I just mentioned, in one of twenty client rooms at the back, built out of two-by-fours and plywood. They had no lights, these rooms, and it took me, a translator, two agents and an FBI psychiatrist to calm her down long enough to get her statement. She was hysterical. All she kept saying was ‘Manos! Manos! Manos!’”
Parker squinted at the road, not wanting to hear anymore, but knowing he was about to.
“That . . . and freakin’ numbers. In Spanish. Ocho, ses, quatro. Over and over. We finally find out that it was because she was always kept in the dark, back there, in that shitty plywood room. And the only way she knew how many men were raping her at one time? Was by counting the number of hands on her body, holding her down.”
He grunted in pain at what he as hearing. “Oh, man. Clopton, I—”
She either didn’t hear him or didn’t want to hear him. Cutting him off, Clopton let it all out. “I want this guy. I want his damned head on a pike. If I’ve got the legal means to do it, and a few semi-legal ways to make the legal part happen? You best believe it’s gonna happen.”
“Fair enough. We’re both on the same page, then. Now what?”
“LAX to Cabo San Lucas, because we both know who you’re going to see.”
He smiled. Shit. She does her homework. Still, he did not confirm anything but simply said, “Go ahead.”
“When you get to Cabo, go to a restaurant called Señor Nachos. It’s across from El Squid Roe. Ask for the lobster tacos. They don’t serve lobster tacos but never mind, just make the order and wait for Jim to arrive with your intel, got it?”
“Got it. But one thing before you go, Clopton?” Parker said, suddenly remembering his talk with Trudy.
“What?”
“That whole head-on-a-pike thing? I get it. I really do. But I’m not going down there to kill him, okay? This is hopefully gonna be a simple snatch and run, got it?”
She laughed. “I understand. A simple snatch and run? With a guy like Güero? I hope you pull it off, I really do. Because that head-on-a-pike thing? I really, really want it to be me that gets that honor. In a courtroom. In front of a judge. Before he goes into a hole as dark as the ones he likes to put women in.”
“And your superiors? How they gonna be down with this? Or, for that matter, the judge in that courtroom?”
“With this guy’s track record of horrors? I won’t need much. Hey. We put the word out down there; one of the guys that’s gonna meet with you is a DEA informant. Official record will show that he reported Güero’s location and a private citizen made the arrest.”
Parker grinned. “A private citizen?”
“Yeah. Your buddy, if he jumps on board with you. Regardless, said citizen, for his own safety against the murderous bad-guy cartel that Güero works for, will have to be a John Doe, with only a short written statement. Our DEA station chief signs off on it down there, I sign off on it up here. Done.”
“Shit. You really are coloring with this one, Clopton. And pretty much with only the red crayon.”
She laughed. “Yes and no. Sometimes the rules can be blurred. And don’t forget The Mayan and your partner, Campos.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. You may think that Güero had no direct connection to that shooting, and you’re probably right, but in a lot of people’s minds on this end? Güero was in a club where a cop was shot and nearly killed. Period. And you know what that means, right?”
“What?”
“It means screw the red crayon. I get to use the whole box.”
With that, she hung up.
The drive from Napa went quickly enough. Along the way, Parker made a stop in Los Banos to get some gas. Seeing a Chipotle nearby, he hit the head, then grabbed a carnitas burrito and a root beer, which he ate while sitting alone at a plastic table scratched up with graffiti.
Once back on the road, he found traffic on the 5 Freeway was wide open at this hour, and with the landscape buried in the dark of night, Parker played his music and bathed in the reflections of the dashboard lights off the interior windows, one of which now told him it was just past midnight.
Wearily, in the corner of his eye, he noticed that the lights appeared to be bending into an outline of someone in the passenger seat. The outline thickened and filled. Napoleon had returned.
“How long you been sitting there?” Parker asked.
“The whole ride,” Napoleon said.
“What?”
Napoleon laughed. “Man, you’re gullible, Parker. You actually think I have time to sit here for a long cruise down the highway with your ass?”
Parker smiled. Then chuckled. The car grew quiet for a second as Napoleon’s tan glow became more obvious in the darkness. Parker noticed him looking out the passenger window. “What is it, Parker,” he finally said, “with you, me and this freeway?”
Parker nodded. “I was just thinking about that earlier . . . Our drive up and down this road chasing Fasano.”
“Good times,” Napoleon said with a smile.
“The best,” Parker replied with a scoff.
Again, Nap grew quiet. Looking co
ntemplative, he spoke again. “It’s all so different now.”
Parker glanced over at him. “What is?”
“The world . . . everything . . . when you see it from this side.”
“How so?”
“I dunno. It’s kinda like watching a play that you’ve only seen parts of before. You can see some things coming in the story, in between parts that are a total surprise.”
“Sounds awkward. And hard.”
“Yeah. But the hardest part is the context.”
“Context?”
“Yeah. I think it’s part of my training, to be honest. Does that make you feel a little better? Hearing that you’re not the only rookie, now?”
Parker eased his Camaro into the slow lane and set the cruise control at seventy. The road ahead was wide open, with only one set of taillights far up ahead in the distance. He looked over at Napoleon. “Ha! Training? Who’s the lucky one that got the job of training your ass?”
“You remember the gray guy in that driveway?”
“At the Brasco house? No way.”
“Way.”
Raising his eyebrows, Parker sniggered. “Better you than me, man. That dude . . .”
“What?”
It was Parker’s turn to take a long pause. “Look. I’m not the easiest person to get to know, I get that. But the whole God and religion thing? When you’ve seen what I’ve seen? It’s hard to accept, you know what I’m saying?” Napoleon nodded gently but said nothing as Parker continued. “I mean, over there. The bodies. The body parts. The medics trying to tell guys with seconds to live that they’d be fine? How can that shit happen in a world with a God who exists at all, much less one who is supposed to care? And that’s sorta how I felt about things and figured I would always feel about things. Then? That gray guy appears in that driveway and turns it all upside down.”
Nap smiled. “How so?”
Parker sighed. “Because he’s proof, man. Like, I dunno, evidence. And now? You? You’re more proof. And, dammit, I preferred not . . . not . . .”
“Not knowing.”
“Yeah! Exactly. Because, sometimes, having the answer isn’t enough. You know that. Just like at a crime scene. Once you get the how . . . now you need to know the why.”
“You might want to be careful with that one, rookie,” Napoleon replied. He looked back out the passenger window. “You might not be ready for the answer.”
Maggie forced away her panic and told herself to focus. Be tactical. Assess the situation.
Delva was the leader of this little “we’ve watched too many horror movies” crowd, that much was obvious. So, she’d be the first one Maggie would have to kill. Misha was so feeble she could be eliminated with only a shove, but Anastasia somehow seemed stronger than she looked. The length of her arms would make it harder to get in close and her frame seemed solid. She’d have to be taken out with a foot sweep, to get her low enough to incapacitate. Mr. Saw, her Taekwondo instructor, had always said that a level opponent was an equal opponent. If done quickly, the foot sweep would probably mean a broken hip or shoulder.
Her pulse was racing right along with her thoughts. Maggie took a deep breath. Then another. Was she really thinking about attacking three old ladies? About actually killing one of them? Yes. She was. When trapped in a “do or die” situation, most people will do whatever it takes not to die. If that meant biting Miney’s nose right off his damned face or putting a pencil in one of Anastasia’s eyes? So be it. She was going to get the hell out of here, with Luisa, no matter what.
Delva had both hands over Luisa’s stomach, which barely had a bump. You’d never know she was pregnant just by looking at her.
“I can feel its heartbeat all the way from over here,” Sonia said.
Maggie didn’t even look her way. Because Sonia was a different kind of problem. There was something about her that conveyed pure, unfiltered danger. She should be the one that Maggie took out first. Not Delva. But in this case, the strongest would have to wait to last. Because she would be the hardest fight, it would have to be one-on-one, without the three old ladies getting in the way.
You are absolutely kidding yourself! You? By yourself? The four women, maybe. But aren’t you forgetting something: the four thugs with guns all around you?
Her panic began to rise again. Back at the shack, four-to-one was bad enough math. She’d come to accept that in the hopes things would somehow get better, in a bullshit Disney sort of way, but now it was eight-to-one. She exhaled in defeat.
Sonia walked across the room as Delva rolled Luisa’s shirt up and over her breasts, then touched Luisa’s stomach. “I can feel it there. Waiting. Pondering. We must call to it.”
“To what?” Anastasia asked.
“The child that will inherit the baby’s body.”
Maggie perked up her ears.
“Which child is that?”
“The Master will know who to call, and from which land to call it.”
“In hell, you mean?” Anastasia asked. Perhaps in her early-sixties, she was the youngest of the three.
“There are many lands, in many places, Anastasia,” Delva replied in a professorial tone. “The Master works all things together, as best he can, to the evilest outcome he can.”
“Yes, he does, doesn’t he?” Misha murmured from across the room.
“It’s really quite blissful when you see it happen,” Delva said dreamily. “Somewhere, right this very second, she awaits. A spawn not yet called. Maybe she will come directly from hell, though I doubt that, as the spirit’s power would be too much for a fetus to contain. So. Maybe she’ll come from The Broken Valley, or The Dark Castle or perhaps even The Hanging Forest. But she will come.”
“I can’t wait,” Anastasia said. She spread her arms wide. “Well? Should we get started?”
With a nod from Delva, Anastasia began to chant and Misha went to the altar, where she began opening various small jars and pouring some of the contents of each into a black bowl that looked as if it were made of stone. Using a small pestle to grind the contents down, she then cured it over the flames of one of the candles, moving from one ingredient to the next. The altar seemed aglow in orange and yellow flickers as the room grew darker, the light revealing countless wrinkles and scars on Misha’s face.
“Make sure you get it right,” Delva said.
Misha grunted and barked back at her, “I will. I will.”
“Bring her to the chair,” Delva ordered Moe, who complied. After easing Luisa down, he stood aside, sweat beading on his forehead. Up to this point, he, Eenie, Meenie and Miney had all stayed silent. But, despite his apparent nervousness, Moe’s curiosity seemed to get the best of him.
“What happens now?” he said to Delva.
There was something in the way that Delva looked at Moe that was just plain bad. A menacing look came over her face, as if he’d overstepped his bounds, and then, on a dime, her voice turned friendly and cheerful. “Oh! You want to know what’s next, do you?”
But Moe wasn’t fooled. He took a small step back and shook his head vigorously, looking very much like a man who wished he could travel back in time and take his words back. “I’m sorry, no, no, no . . .”
“No, no, no . . .” Delva said mockingly, before cranking her head to the side. “It’s good to know. Sometimes. I mean, you’ve had the courage to ask, so you deserve an answer, don’t you think?”
“No!” Moe shouted. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”
“Yes,” Delva said in a deep voice, as she dropped her chin and glared at him. “You certainly did.”
She nodded quickly, and in a flash Sonia stepped forwards. Proving what Maggie suspected, that she was the most dangerous of them all, Sonia pulled a long dagger from the folds of her garment and ran it straight through Moe’s back and out his chest. He gasped in shock and agony as Sonia stepped in close behind him and supported his skewered body.
“Madre mia!” Meenie cried out.
Maggie looked at him.
Then Eenie and Miney. Surely, they wouldn’t stand for this. Maggie waited for them to do something. To pull their guns and start shooting. But they didn’t. Instead, they stood frozen in place. Meenie’s hands were shaking.
Delva stepped forwards and put a long finger under Moe’s chin. He spat a little blood as his terror-filled eyes stared into hers. “So . . . it’s Ernesto, si?” she asked, revealing Moe’s real name. “You wanted to know, so here it is: we are mixing a little drink for the girl. The drink will help the baby grow faster. We will cut the baby out at the right time, when the spawn arrives to inhabit it, and we will raise that spawn to kill, aaaall the days of its life.” She cackled, looked to the ceiling and then back at Moe. “She will be trained to kill as many as she can, as beautifully and cruelly as possible.”
Ernesto’s eyes began to roll back in his head but Delva was having none of it. “No! You don’t get to die yet!” she commanded. And, placing a hand on his temple, she brought his gaze back to her somehow. “You haven’t heard the rest of what I have to say, and the rest is the most important part, Ernesto. It will impart in you a truth you will need in order to make it home, to The Master’s domain, for the pain and loathing that awaits you there that will aid you in becoming what you are meant to be next. Are you ready, Ernesto?”
Ernesto shook his head vigorously as tears filled his eyes. Sonia bore down on the dagger, causing a fresh wave of agony to shoot through his body. He grunted and tried to cry out but Delva covered his mouth as she finished. “Ernesto, here is the truth of your life: your mother was a whore. She slept with half the men in town and your father let her, because he was a weak man, a pathetic man. So pathetic, in fact, that he was never really sure he was your true father.”
Miney looked away, as if ashamed on behalf of his companion, and so did Eenie. Ernesto’s eyes, meanwhile, widened in shock again. Except this time, it did not look like the shock of bodily pain, but rather of mental agony. Hurt. Sorrow. Betrayal. Denial. Belief. They all flickered there, like the flames from the candles around the altar, right before he grunted, vomited blood over Delva’s hand, and died.
The Parker Trilogy Page 70