Fields of Wrath (Luis Chavez Book 1) (22 page)

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 use 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.”

“I don’t know,” Luis admitted. “But that’s what I hope to find out.”

Luis hung up. Michael stared at the cell as if wondering if what he just heard was a dream. He sensed someone’s eyes at the back of his head. He turned to find Helen eyeing him curiously.

“What was all that?” she asked, bewildered.

“Remember this moment when we’re packing up.”

“What?” Helen scoffed. “Where are we going? The DA’s office?”

“Governor’s mansion,” Michael replied. “We’re about to be the top story of every news channel, paper, and website in the world.”

PART V

XXVII

Michael called District Attorney Rebenold first. She seemed to understand the gravity of the situation right away. Michael could practically hear her resisting the urge to scold him for keeping it off her radar.

“Tell anyone who needs to hear it you have my full backing and support,” she said. “I’ll make a couple of calls myself. Remember to keep a few people out of it to use as impartial magistrates. Don’t lose track of the details in your zeal.”

Michael was about to protest that he wasn’t some kind of amateur but kept quiet. He needed Rebenold on his side for when the Marshaks’ political allies started raising holy hell.

“Also, I need the list of searchable objects of the various Marshak offices to be as broad as possible without looking like a fishing operation. What was the name of the witness you needed in protective custody?”

“Odilia Garanzuay,” Michael said.

“As for the media—”

Michael had been waiting for this and cut her off.

“I don’t have the level of media training you do,” Michael interjected. “Do you think you can be the face of this?”

The DA went silent. Wondering if it was a trick before realizing it was strategy.

“Of course,” Rebenold agreed. “I’ll make sure you get the credit.”

“Thanks, but I’d like to avoid the blame if this goes belly-up.”

Deborah was about to chide him for being too modest when a text appeared on her phone.

“What’s this?”

“The list you asked for, as well as the locations of the various Marshak properties.”

“Including the ones where you believe capital crimes took place?”

“Yes, but for all I know, it’s still the tip of the iceberg,” Michael admitted. “Let’s just pray we have the ability to see the whole picture.”

As soon as he got off the phone, he saw Helen eyeing him from across the room.

“What?” he asked.

“You sound like you’re already writing your first campaign speech.”

He scoffed but then thought about this.
Maybe I am . . .

The first warrants came back within forty-five minutes. As soon as this happened, the phones of county sheriff’s deputies, marshals, FBI field supervisors and agents, INS inspectors, ATF agents, and LAPD patrol officers began to ring. It was all hands on deck, with details to be delivered at roll call. They all knew it was big, but no one was trusted with the full scope of the operation.

The teams going after financial records figured it was a widespread white-collar financial scandal with implications for the international markets, hence the secrecy. The ones sent to the ports thought it had to do with contraband running, either guns or drugs. Still others believed rightly that it involved illegal labor but couldn’t guess in which industry. The INS and the FBI were alone in using the words “human trafficking.” Only when an agent was told that no, they would not be coordinating with Ventura County law enforcement, did she inform her colleagues that something widespread was afoot.

The Los Angeles district attorney’s and US attorney’s offices were the only ones that had all the information. The latter was looped in after Justice filed an immediate inquiry with DA Rebenold. When this was ignored, a call from the US attorney general to her personal cell phone came in.

Arrangements to share information and resources were made quickly.

At his home in Conejo Valley, Jason Marshak slept in, but it was a troubled sleep. He could scarcely close his eyes without seeing Odilia. It was the same image on repeat, the resignation on her face as they left his uncle’s house. She’d looked like a beaten dog, and it was his fault. He told her it would be different once the Crown contract was signed and he was in charge. Glenn would have to understand that his role would be diminished, as Jason would be leading the company into the future. But just like that, he’d shown her how short a leash Glenn had him on.

He should’ve defended Odilia. Told Glenn that it was his company now and there was nothing he could do about it. Instead, he’d taken her by the arm and raced out like an embarrassed schoolboy. Her disappointment in him burned as hot and raw as it had in the moment.

Once upon a time he’d been able to stomach the reality that he had to share her with several men. If he showed favoritism, took her out of the Blocks too early, she wouldn’t respect his authority. She wouldn’t be grateful enough to him, her savior. But all that was over now. Santiago Higuera had believed he loved her more than Jason did, and a part of Odilia had bought into that for whatever reason.

Santiago had probably been a good liar.

But Odilia was a changed person after she’d come back from the desert. She’d learned her lesson. Still, he couldn’t let a Santiago happen again. He had to make things right before he went crazy. Anything else prolonged the pain. He knew she was hurting, too. This made it all the more urgent.

He threw back the covers and made a beeline for the shower. He masturbated, thinking only of his Odilia. When he got out, he got dressed, grabbed his keys, and hurried out of the house.

He was energized, thinking of the look on her face when he told her how much he loved her. This time he’d back it up by carrying her away from the Blocks, never to return. He’d even take a few days off. Sure, things were hectic at the office these days and he had multiple meetings with Glenn on the books, but he so seldom took days off, they’d have to respect this.

“I love you,” he practiced as he drove. “I
love
you. I love
you
.”

He played with the emphasis. He didn’t want to be over the top, too flowery or romantic. He wanted sincerity, gravity. There had to be an emphasis on how much the word meant to him and how voicing it was not something he took lightly.

As dawn broke, he turned off the main road and bounced onto the gravel path toward the Blocks. It was a beautiful day. Daydreaming into the cloudless sky, he didn’t see the INS trucks until he was twenty yards away.

His immediate impulse was to turn around, but they’d already seen him.
What is this?
He knew everybody at the INS. This couldn’t be a real sting, right? The money had gone out the door, and the paperwork was as good as gold. Maybe one of his workers had gotten away and they were returning him.

Shit, I hope they don’t expect a reward,
he thought.

He pasted a curious look on his face and rolled down the window.

“One of my neighbors darn near panicked seeing you rolling in here with all these trucks, so I told her I’d check it out,” he said, pouring on the rube. “Some kind of hazardous material leak or something?”

The INS agent didn’t crack a smile.

“Sir, we need you to turn around and return to the main road.”

They didn’t recognize him.
Oh shit.
They didn’t recognize him.

“That bad, huh?” Jason asked, keeping it light.

Before the man could repeat his order, Jason waved a hand.

“I’m going, I’m going.”

He pulled a few feet up, executed a quick turn, and was gone before anyone would have time to run his plates.

“What you’ve done is beyond words,” Basmadjian said, sipping his morning OJ from a coffee cup. “I understand maybe not all of it, but I’ve had friends of ours in the legal field take a look. When even they’re impressed, I know I’m onto something. So, thank you.”

Miguel nodded, taking the stack of cash from the table and shoving it in his pocket. He only half heard the words. Basmadjian angered.

“You don’t like praise?” the old man asked.

“I’m sorry,” Miguel said, feigning gratitude. “I’m happy you’re satisfied. I wanted to do a good job, but part of that was making sure everything fit together as neatly as possible. If changes need to be made, the system can be upgraded with minimal teardown.”

Basmadjian eyed Miguel for a long moment. Then to Miguel’s surprise, the old man placed his hand on his.

“I am aware of your family’s trouble. I have informed those who need to know that not only are you uninvolved, I have personally guaranteed your safety.”

“Do you know who killed my mother?”

“Not the name, no,” Basmadjian said softly. “But I have learned that the man who oversaw her killing was already dispatched as well. This was the same person who oversaw the killing of your uncle.”

“Who’s left?”

Basmadjian pulled away his hand, eyeing Miguel as if he should know better than to ask.

“We can’t have vendettas here. There are rules.”

“What about cops?” Miguel asked, keeping his gaze steady.

Basmadjian raised an eyebrow. Miguel slid his phone across the table. On the display were photos of two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, one white, one Asian.

“I pulled the GPS records from various law enforcement motor pools,” Miguel said, voice crackling with anger. “I also found out where the safe houses used by the DA’s office are. Their vehicle was parked out front of one of these addresses for less than five minutes around the exact time my uncle disappeared. Judging from their tax records and bank statements, I’m pretty sure they were involved.”

“What are you asking me?”

Miguel said nothing. If the old man didn’t know, Miguel wasn’t going to spell it out for him.

“I asked you a question, Miguel.”

“I know what I’m asking. And I know you’ll do it.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it would put me in your debt.”

“Deep in my debt,” Basmadjian stressed. “
Permanently
in my debt. You need to ask yourself if this is worth that. You don’t get to ask many favors of me.”

“I knew what I was asking. And if I didn’t think I’d earned it, I wouldn’t have asked.”

Basmadjian snorted.

“I’m not joking,” Miguel pressed, trying to sound older than he was.

“I know you’re not,” Basmadjian said, handing back the phone. “If that’s what you want, it will be handled. Don’t think on it again.”

Miguel rose to exit, but Basmadjian raised a finger.

“This time I
require
your gratitude,” Basmadjian said.

“Thank you,” Miguel said, though he felt worse than before he’d walked in the door.

Henry thought he had a better sense of the town. He’d grown up here, could remember the construction of every major building. But as he stared at a post office that he’d thought was the police station, he knew he was lost.