The Parker Trilogy

by Tony Faggioli

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. He’s earned them some very big money, but he’s gone off the deep end it seems.”

  “How’s that?”

  Jim took a long pull on his beer. “Dude’s into devil worship or something. Rituals. Rumor is, he’s using his own product—”

  Melon wrinkled his brow. “Product?”

  “Yeah. Maybe too much of the drugs, getting high and whacked out—wouldn’t be the first time one of these types became his own best customer—but also the girls.”

  “What do you—”

  Parker cut Melon off. “Oh, man. I’m telling you right now, you don’t want to know any more than what I’ve already told you.”

  Melon shrugged. “You can never have enough info, man. You know that, Park.”

  Jim grew quiet. “Yeah. Well . . . rumor has it he’s been sacrificing some of them.”

  “Bulllll-shit,” Melon replied.

  Parker sighed and leaned his head back. “Told you. Man. Even I haven’t heard that one, yet.”

  “Yeah. May just be a bunch of urban legend bullshit, but supposedly a girl in Cerritos, California and one last month in Tijuana. Evidently, he’s trying to create some sort of demon-succubus creature or some shit.”

  “What the hell is that?” Melon exclaimed.

  “Isn’t a succubus a female vampire?” Parker asked, confused.

  “With a wing-nut like this, is it any wonder he’s confusing his monsters?”

  Something struck Parker. An idea. He voiced it before he could trap it in his mouth. “Or trying to crossbreed them.”

  They all grew quiet for a minute before Jim cleared his throat. “Well. There’s a nice thought. Anyway. Effort in futility. We all know vampires aren’t real.”

  And Parker almost smiled, because Jim had been specific, hadn’t he? Vampires? That was silly stuff. But no comment whatsoever on the demon part of that equation. This was another vote for Jim being ex-military. Because once a man has seen the death and destruction cut loose with the wild abandon of men at war, there’s no longer any doubt that evil, in one way, shape or form, existed. And Parker was chastising himself, internally, for not coming to this realization sooner within himself. He didn’t need angels to appear or his partner to come back from the dead to show him there was way more going on in this world than many realized. He already knew. But, like any inconvenient truth, it was just easier to deny it.

  “So . . .” Jim continued, exhaling through his nose, “the cartel is thinking of taking him out.”

  “Ha!” Melon said. “Even the bad guys have a limit on how much bad they can deal with, huh?”

  “Evidently.”

  Parker said one word. “Leverage.”

  Melon nodded. Jim nodded and replied, “Yep. You nab him, get him to us and we play him some of these taped phone calls that show him his own people are planning to make him worm food—”

  “He’s more likely to give up the ghost on all their operations.”

  “Yep.”

  Parker rubbed his chin. Clopton was smart, for sure. “So, what’s the plan? Because the Kincaid woman or the girl could be next, and I don’t want to get there too late.”

  “Short ferry across the Gulf to the mainland. One of our guys is waiting on the other side. We can get you there by dusk today. I can get a cache—”

  “We already have all the weapons and gear we’ll need,” Melon said, matter-of-factly.

  “Okay. Good. Anyway, you go in. We’ll be off-site a few miles—”

  “Just far enough away to drive off if things go south for us, like nothing ever happened, or close enough to swoop in and claim the credit, if things go well?”

  Jim looked at Melon with mild shock in his face.

  “What, man? You think this is our first rodeo? We know the game. Go on.”

  “That’s not how it is, but whatever. We’ll be off-site. As soon as you radio out that you got him, we’ll come in and get you all out. Car evac to a pickup point, then helicopter transport across the border.”

  “Good luck keeping that quiet from the Mexican government.”

  “By then, it’ll be too late for them to do anything about it. We’ll toss a cover story on it and remind them of the US federal dollars they’re getting. They’ll be butt hurt, pout for a few weeks, and get over it.”

  Parker finished his beer and looked out over the street and the sea beyond. “It could get messy.”

  “I know. We’re ready for that, too. Clean-up team will be waiting with us.”

  “Okay. Give us an hour to get to my house to get the gear together, then send someone to pick us up. Because I don’t want my car or anything else about me tied to this. I’m assuming you know where I live by now?” Melon said.

  “Yes. And while we’re on that subject?”

  Melon looked at him with a smirk. “Yeah?”

  “I get why he’s doing this,” Jim said, motioning his head towards Parker. “But why you?”

  Parker watched as Melon and Jim eyed each other for a moment before Melon replied, “I go where my brother goes.”

  Jim did not smile. Instead, he gave a small nod and said, “And where my brother before him goes.”

  The table grew quiet. There was no point in asking Jim anything about himself. He was no doubt with The Agency, a Langley operative, so any answer he gave you could be a lie anyway. But this last comment pretty much cemented his pedigree, if nothing else; he was ex-special ops, for sure. So, when Jim spoke next, Parker gave him the benefit of the doubt that he suspected Melon would now give him, too. “If this thing goes sideways, I’ll give you all the help I can possibly give, I promise you that. Definitely more than Clopton or any of the other Fed geeks would rubber stamp. That being said? Don’t fuck this up.”

  The waitress came over with a large plate of carne asada tacos that no one had ordered. Probably standard operating procedure for when Jim met operatives here. They ate quickly, because food was important before any mission, and then said their goodbyes until later.

  As he and Melon walked back to the jeep, Parker’s thoughts turned to how quickly things were moving. Way quicker than he expected. He’d barely landed in the country and they were already making a move. Insane. And it was all because of that Kincaid woman. A Facebook post using one of her abductor’s phones? It was incredible. He didn’t even know who she was, but already he knew one thing about her.

  She was a smart, smart girl.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  About a quarter mile over uneven terrain later, breathing so hard that he felt his lungs might explode, Father Soltera finally saw The Stairway.

  There, about a hundred and fifty feet on the other side of a narrow river, it was framed by a huge patch of overgrown Japanese elms. Just like Michiko had said. There was no missing it because, most striking of all, it was bathed in moonlight. Vivid, bright moonlight, as if night were the only thing that could ever puncture this place from the outside. It cast an eerie glow down the steps, stopping hard right at the base of the steps, as if no longer permitted by some invisible law of the forest to advance.

  His heart sunk. What if Tabitha had made it here and passed through already?

  He needn’t have worried. He heard her before he saw her, grunting with frustration as she moved into view with a clay jar in her hands. Shattering it against the steps, she then began shifting through the shards.

  He noticed that there were actually bits and pieces of shattered clay everywhere, tan and brown shards creating jagged points of reference amid all the deep, dark shadows. There was no way she’d broken that many jars already, so what was going on?

  He resisted the urge to charge across the river, tortured by the knowledge that he was so close to home but knowing that he wasn’t about to leave Michiko behind.

  “Michiko!” he whispered, hoping that she could hear.

  There was no reply.

  Between him and the other side, staggered across the river, were a series of stepping sto
nes, all made of marble of various colors and patterns. The stones looked slippery and dangerous. “I don’t know if I can cross that,” he said to himself.

  Tabitha looked up, saw him and snarled with obvious rage and frustration.

  There was something about the clay jars that was holding it up, but he didn’t know what.

  “You won’t succeed, God Man,” Tabitha screamed. “You can’t. I’ll kill you as soon as you cross over so just turn and go back to your little island.”

  He shook his head at her.

  “No?” she yelled across the river. “Then come on then!”

  Not allowing himself to hesitate, Father stepped out onto the first stone.

  Shame filled his body instantly. There was no mistaking it; the emotion was moving up through his foot, from the first stone, and through his body. Shame. So much shame. For the past. For the present. In him all along, like bruises that never healed. That time could never reach.

  “I can’t go on . . .” His feet were slipping on the rock, and his momentum was carrying him forwards, so he had no choice. The second stone brought another emotion: sorrow. It, too, carved into his heel and up his leg, first into his stomach and then to his chest, where it clutched his heart in a strangle hold. He felt his lips turn south and sadness crease his brow but still he pushed on, over another stone that made him feel brutally lonely, and two more that produced melancholy and regret, before he found himself halfway across the river.

  I can do this! he said to himself, like when he was a teenager in summer camp, afraid to take a rope bridge across a dipping valley outside Lansing in Michigan. Except that wasn’t the best moment to recall, was it? Because he’d turned back, hadn’t he? His knuckles white on the ropes and his mind blasted with terror, he’d turned back. Causing a backlog. All the kids behind him mocking him as one of the camp instructors helped him back to the entrance.

  He felt woozy and began to tip backwards, as if to force himself to fall back towards the shoreline, before he felt her small hand center itself between his shoulder blades.

  “Keep moving, tomodachi!”

  Bliss filled him. It was Michiko.

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Thank God you’re back.”

  She gave him a tiny nod. “Yes. But I am too weak to help you much, Father. I barely made it here.”

  He looked at her face, which was slack. She looked feverish.

  Turning back to the river, he stepped across another two stones, one of pain and the other of loss, and he was now only three stones away from the other side. He could do this. He could.

  The next stone, however, was one made of utter and complete desperation that climbed up and over him like a wild animal. He struggled and was falling sideways when he felt Michiko reach out with her tanto blade and place the flat side of it against his shoulder, steadying him with incredible strength. He couldn’t be sure, but he also thought he felt her give him another little nudge, and the next stone wasn’t much better. It was one of guilt. Joaquin Murietta came to dance in his head, as did the images of all the little girls Joaquin had murdered and all the faces of their family members, some who came to Father Soltera for comfort, never suspecting that it was he, by way of the sanctity of the confessional, who had let their child’s murderer get away.

  He was a bad person. A bad man. Unworthy of God or anyone. A destitute creature who was meant for this place—to hang from a noose, or to be perpetually hunted by all the dire wolves that roamed here, or to have his eyes clawed out daily by the Fire-Belly Cats.

  No escape. No justice.

  “You are not damned, Bernie,” Michiko said. “Just lost. Now keep going.”

  Consuming anguish overcame him. “Why? What’s the point?”

  “Because,” she said softly and calmly, despite their circumstances, “you are almost found.”

  He took a step to the final rock and was not the least bit surprised that it was made of nothing but terror. Here he was, all the way across the river, almost safely to the other side, and inexplicably he spun and tried to run back the other way.

  Michiko gripped him by his arms and steadied him yet again, but he was full of nothing but a want of survival as he tried to push past her. In her weakened state, she seemed barely able to stop him. Then, incredibly, she did something he never expected: she embraced him. Then, she lovingly shushed him, like a child. “Shhhhhhhhhh,” she said softly. “Shhhhhhhh.” The sound was comforting, and it caused him to look into her eyes.

  And what he saw there was the light of heaven. Still. Patient. Encouraging.

  He turned around and leapt with that encouragement, over the stone of terror and to the shore beyond it, as Michiko came up right beside him.

  Tabitha charged him immediately, baring those small razor-sharp teeth that protruded so unnaturally from such a tiny mouth.

  Michiko stepped between the two of them and grappled with Tabitha as she lunged. They fell to the ground and began to wrestle with each other, Michiko barely able to hold her at bay, and that’s when Father Soltera realized how weak she really was.

  “Get to The Stairway. Hurry. Please!” Michiko said with great effort as Tabitha tried biting at her face and throat.

  Father Soltera made his way to The Stairway. At the top of the steps was a massive oak door with a huge iron rung in the center and a keyhole just below it. He stumbled up the steps with desperate relief to the door, grabbed the iron rung and pulled.

  Nothing.

  He tried, again and again, with a strength juiced with adrenaline. Nothing. Panic swarmed over him as he glanced all around with shocked confusion. “No!” he screamed with frustration. He looked to Michiko, whose face was twisted in dismay.

  Behind them, the river splashed in waves as Tabitha separated herself from Michiko, stumbled backwards and began to giggle uncontrollably. “No way out, God Man!” she cried. “There’s no way out!”

  An hour later, and they’d made some progress. Hector was able to pool the blue in his hands, just like The Gray Man had wanted. From there, he could form small orbs, about the size of tennis balls.

  But throwing them was much harder. He’d charred the wall across from his cell door with only three successful tosses. It was just like learning how to throw a ball, expect these balls were coursing with energy and stuck to your hands, which forced you to adapt your timing before you released them. It was awkward. So far, much to his frustration, if he tried throwing as he would a baseball the orb would veer sharply left just before it was about to hit what he was aiming at.

  The Gray Man, whose image had been going out more and more sporadically, also seemed a bit frustrated. I must go, he said suddenly.

  “What? Why?”

  I can no longer hold the forces here at bay. I had to get at least one good training session in with you, but it’s taken a lot of focus. And the other one I am training is going to need me, soon. I must get to him.

  “Wait! You can’t just leave me here. Dinner is going to be soon and—”

  The Gray Man looked pressed upon. I know, Hector. Casting a somber glance at the shiv, he looked into Hector’s eyes. But you know what to do now, right?

  Hector nodded. “Yeah, man. I know.”

  I’ll be back as soon as I can.

  “What? I mean, what about my mission—”

  Hector, all this . . . The Gray Man said with a sigh as he motioned to the charred black spots on the wall from Hector’s training. It’s the least important part of the process, do you understand? The real key to any mission is getting a millionth to conquer whatever it is within them that’s keeping their heart from speaking to their soul.

  “But—”

  You’re already there, son.

  “But what if you’re not here when—”

  If I’m not back in time, just remember that your mission is not that complicated. You just have to know your right from your left.

  Then The Gray Man was gone.

  Stunned, Hector paced around in his cell a few time
s, then practiced forming the orbs in his hands a little more, marveling still at the brightness of the blue and how the cores went pure white if you held onto them long enough. By closing his hands, he could cancel them out completely.

  Feeling tired, he lay down on his cot and tried to sleep. It was no use. He was too stressed about dinner and what Curtis was about to do. When he’d tried to ask The Gray Man earlier what he should do to stop him, his only reply had been, You must wait for the moment to reveal itself before the answer will reveal itself. It was cryptic as shit and it only stressed Hector out more.

  He made his way to his desk and was stubbornly trying to ignore the clock while he worked his way through another chapter of West with the Night when The Smiling Midget stepped through the bars of his cell with a grim look on his face. Tsk, tsk, tsk, he said. I’m so disappointed in you, Hector.

  “Get out of here,” Hector said, without even looking up from his book.

  Without warning, the book was ripped by an invisible force from his hands and pinned to the far wall. The Smiling Midget began opening and closing his fingers, and as he did, pages of the book were ripped out by the handful and tossed to the ground.

  Hector glared at him.

  Don’t give me that pissy look, you stupid boy, The Smiling Midget said in a tone Hector had never heard before. I tried to ask you nicely, but . . . nope.

  “What are you talking about?”

  I can still smell him here, The Smiling Midget spat. That stupid gray ghost of yours. I don’t know what you two were doing or talking about, but forget it, whatever it was.

  “What’s it to you?”

  What’s it to me? No. What’s it to you, dumbass? You see the clock?

  Hector glanced at the alarm clock on his desk. It was five minutes to dinner time. “What about it?”