by Mark Wheaton
“And if he embarrasses the archdiocese?” Osorio said acidly. “There are those who won’t blame the novice so much as his parish priest. Think about that the next time you’re wondering why you’ve never been consecrated as a bishop.”
“Who is or isn’t in favor with the diocese has never been of interest to me. If Father Chavez is following a course he believes in, I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s not doing it outside of God’s purview.”
Osorio simmered on this before dismissing it with a sad shake of the head.
“Luis Chavez is like the faithful dog searching for a worthy master,” Osorio said. “That master is meant to be you. He is too young and inexperienced to fully extrapolate the will of God. Give him too much agency and you will ruin him.”
With that, Osorio rose to leave.
“Thank you,” Whillans said.
Osorio turned back to him, surprised.
“You’re right. I will speak to him.”
“We are a clergy of fatherless sons, Gregory,” Osorio said in the doorway. “Sometimes the ones who run to us are as damaged as the ones we’ll never reach.”
Pompous ass.
XXIV
Midway through the day, a pair of overseers came to Luis’s row. They’d been the ones driving the trucks full of strawberry bins away throughout the morning, occasionally taking a couple of workers with them. They’d so far left Luis alone, but now they stood over him.
“Hey, don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the guys have taken turns riding to the warehouses with us to cool off,” said the taller of the pair, whose accent sounded vaguely Honduran. “You’re the only one who hasn’t volunteered.”
“Warehouses?” Luis asked.
“Yeah, walk-in refrigerators. You get a few minutes of cool breeze on the ride, fifteen minutes of freezer time, then back out in this heat. I mean, we can give somebody else your spot, but fair’s fair.”
Luis was already on his feet. The Honduran smiled.
“Let’s go.”
It was a longer drive than Luis expected. From his row he could tell the fields were vast. Passing alongside them on a seemingly endless road, however, made him think there was enough food here to feed the entire country.
The Honduran and his pal—a silent, brooding type with scars on his face—sat up front, while Luis and another newcomer, Rodolfo, were in back with the berries. Though they didn’t get much of a breeze, stretching out in the small space behind the containers did wonders for Luis’s back.
“Are you really a priest?” Rodolfo asked a few minutes into the journey.
“I am.”
“Where’d you grow up?”
“All over. You?”
“Oaxaca,” Rodolfo said.
“Where? My mother was from Monjas.”
“That’s funny. I’m from Ejutla de Crespo.”
Luis nodded. It was just up the highway, if he remembered right. They talked for a few minutes longer, and Luis got the whole story. Just as he had suggested to Michael Story, a recruiter had come around Rodolfo’s town with stories of jobs up north. Most didn’t believe him, until he whipped out his iPhone and showed them pictures.
“He told us that the easiest way to get citizenship was to have a legal job waiting,” Rodolfo explained. “He showed us the paperwork and everything. We just got docked a transport fee. We had to find our own way up to the Port of Manzanillo in Colima, but they said they’d take care of the rest. When they saw it was a cargo container on a ship and not some truck, my friends bailed. I got on. I had nothing to lose. When they hear from me, man, they’re going to kick themselves.”
Luis nodded. He knew what this must look like to someone who’d known nothing but abject poverty.
“You like the States?” Rodolfo asked.
“Like anywhere, it’s got the good and the bad.”
Rodolfo took a strawberry out of the nearest bin, pulled off the leaves, and popped it into his mouth. “So far it’s pretty great.”
The truck slowed. Luis saw a cluster of single-story warehouses positioned at the edge of the fields. Each was about the size of half a football field, with over a dozen such buildings arranged in neat rows. On each side were large garage doors, though some had sloped driveways to allow tractor-trailers to be loaded without ramps.
He suddenly got a bad feeling. Had he been so easily talked into riding into an ambush? If they attacked him in the fields, there’d be plenty of witnesses. The warehouses, on the other hand, were isolated and closed off. No one would see and no one would question.
These thoughts pricked at him as the truck came to a stop inside one of the buildings. He stayed behind as Rodolfo and the drivers piled out. Only after his new friend had carted out the first few bins did he stand up.
“Hey, if you want to stay in the hot truck, be my guest,” Rodolfo said. “Just don’t let the overseers catch you lazing.”
Though the boxes of strawberries were heavy, the work felt good. Instead of being bowed over in the fields, Luis carried the crates upright, allowing him to stretch a little more and pull his leg muscles straight as well. It was nowhere near as bad as the first few days in Santiago’s fields, but he was still stiff.
The best part about it was that the refrigerators were as promised: cool.
“Slow down, Padre!” Rodolfo joked as Luis stacked another three bins atop one another. “You in a hurry to get back to the fields?”
Luis eyed the Honduran overseer, who shrugged. He replaced two of the boxes and walked just one into the fridge this time.
“Much better,” Rodolfo enthused, doing the same. “Let’s stretch this out to an hour. At least.”
Luis laughed and took his time.
When the truck was half-empty, he happened to look out toward the road. Bouncing toward the warehouses was a large F-150 pickup pulling a trailer. It was the contents of the trailer that captured his attention. It was a car, one with multiple blue tarps roped onto it. The tarps did a good job of obscuring what lay beneath, but the lower half of the wheels and a sliver of chassis were visible. Its tires were slashed. But as Luis had been in the car less than twenty-four hours before, he knew immediately whose it was.
Maria’s.
Everything his vocation had given him was stripped away in an instant: the discipline, the peace, his devotion to God. What stood in its place was the man he’d once been. He wanted to kill someone.
Miguel had done it. It had taken all night, but it was done. Sure, he would have to spend the day making calls, returning confirmation e-mails, and faxing—yes, faxing—paperwork to banks and a handful of less reputable institutions, but that was just knocking down the dominoes he’d spent all night lining up.
It hadn’t been easy. There were a few things he’d still have to go back and fix. But by and large it was a beautiful machine. Once it was turned on, Basmadjian would look like a moderately successful small businessman who’d invested shrewdly and diversified wisely. There was nothing suspicious about it, nothing implemented that an incredibly well-paid consulting firm wouldn’t have recommended as well.
Miguel’s only fear was that in his zeal he’d made himself superfluous. This could be ameliorated by stressing his singular ability to maintain the system and how the subtleties of how it all fit together were in his head.
He hoped that would be enough to save his life.
Now he needed fresh air. He’d smoked seven or eight joints over the course of the night and craved convenience-store pizza and Peanut M&M’s. He’d already decided not to go to school. He’d find a way to convince his mom it was okay.
He was still seriously stoned on the walk to the convenience store two blocks away. He considered buying a few slices but opted for the whole pizza. Might as well live it up. He filled his arms with candy and energy drinks, dropping them next to the register as the clerk boxed up his
breakfast.
When he turned onto his street and saw the squad car parked in front of his house, his first reaction was incredulity. How the hell had they caught him already? Had they seen him leave Basmadjian’s place? Had he made some ridiculous rookie mistake that set off alarm bells without him even knowing it? Or worse, had he been so naïve to think the old man wouldn’t sell him out the second he was done?
As he got closer, he could see the officers’ faces. There was a man and a woman. Both looked drawn, both looked hesitant. The man knocked on the door.
“Hello? Mrs. Higuera? It’s the police department. We need to talk to you. There’s been a fire. Mrs. Higuera? Are you in there?”
It was the politest tone he’d ever heard from a law enforcement officer. Before he’d even finished the thought, he knew his mother must be dead. The information drained him of thought. He felt as if the earth had suddenly lost its hold on him, gravity weakening to the point that he was neither attached nor bound to anything. It felt empty, like every action he’d ever take again would be meaningless now. He didn’t want to know what happened, he didn’t want revenge; he simply wanted to blink out from existence as well.
Instead of turning up his sidewalk, he kept walking. He felt the eyes of one of the officers on his back, as if wondering if he might know the person they were looking for. He didn’t turn around. He stayed away until long after dark.
Back up in the fields, Luis spent the rest of his day in prayer. Not the kind he’d tutored himself in, but the excoriating, accusatory brand that demanded answers from God. When there was no answer, he taunted God by reeling off the horrible things he would do in his name. This drove him on. His rhythm picked up, and he matched the veteran workers in his harvest. It wasn’t conscious. His movements were a reflex as his mind stormed on.
He was just beginning to slow when the trucks came to take them back to the Blocks. As the first to arrive that morning, they were first to leave.
“You guys did great today,” one of the overseers said.
Luis wanted to ask the man if maybe he’d killed Maria personally or just watched. He wanted to strip the man’s scalp from his skull. He’d seen photos of how warriors used to do it. He was pretty sure he could do the same.
“Padre?”
Luis turned. The old man who’d taken his Bible that morning eyed him with worry.
“You can’t look at the overseers like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like that. You think they can’t see?”
Luis saw concern on the man’s face but also fear.
“They killed a friend of mine last night,” Luis said.
The old man absorbed this for a long moment.
“I’m very sorry.”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“You hear things, Father,” he replied. “It’s how they keep everyone in place.”
“If you knew this, why did you come?” Luis asked, incredulous.
“You can’t escape violence, particularly when it’s visited on those who can’t fight back. I accept the world as it is and try to make my way through it. Isn’t that what God wants?”
“No. God expects us to do something about it.”
“You believe that?”
“Yes. It’s what he’s been telling me to do since the beginning,” Luis said, nodding. “I just couldn’t hear him.”
XXV
On the drive back to the Blocks, Luis formulated his plan. He pictured the apartment in his head, going over it inch by inch. The designers had done their job well. There was no way through the burglar bars, and the only window without them was the small frosted-glass one above the toilet in the bathroom. But this didn’t help, as not only had it been installed backwards, to be locked from the outside like the front doors, it was too small to wriggle through.
The only way out was the way they came in.
At first Luis had thought even that was impossible. When he’d been brought in the night before, he’d glimpsed a magnetic sensor for a burglar alarm screwed into the door frame and a second in the door itself. But when he checked it out a second time that morning, he saw no sign that the rest of the system had been installed. He couldn’t decide if this was an oversight or if the builders believed the sensor plates were deterrent enough.
Besides, a real alarm would draw attention. It couldn’t connect to any legitimate alarm company that might call the cops. But to get through the door itself, he’d have to crack the keyed doorknob with a makeshift skeleton key, then cut through the plywood panel to pull the sliding bolt and lower the kick-proof jamb. Not impossible, just dangerously time consuming.
Most everyone was in bed by nine. To a man they were exhausted, some still sleeping off the journey from Mexico. Luis had to force himself to stay awake for at least another hour before setting to work. He’d said nothing of his plans to anyone but received a few querulous looks when he moved his sleeping place from the living room to the cold kitchen floor.
At ten, some of the men were still stirring, so Luis waited another hour. He recited the Bible to himself as he waited for just the right moment to begin work on the door.
Joshua 10:6. The Gibeonites then sent word to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal: “Do not abandon your servants. Come up to us quickly and save us! Help us, . . .”
Joshua 10:7. So Joshua marched up from Gilgal with his entire army, including all the best fighting men.
Joshua 10:8. The Lord said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid of them; I have given them into your hand. Not one of them will be able to withstand you.”
At half past eleven he made his move. He made quick work of the keyed lock with a skeleton key fashioned from wire he’d pulled from a warehouse freezer fan. Using a stem cutter he’d smuggled in from the fields and broken until it resembled a crude box cutter, he stabbed into the door where he estimated the bolt base to be on the other side.
Though the four men sleeping a few feet from where Luis worked hadn’t stirred as he unlocked the doorknob, he doubted he’d be as lucky when he began sawing into the wood. He said a prayer, pulled back the cutter, and sawed.
It was easier than he’d envisioned, the wood coming apart like wood shavings as he cut. He could be out in minutes.
“Wha . . . what’re you doing?”
It was Rodolfo. Luis was already formulating his response when he saw that everyone in the room was awake.
“What are you doing?” Rodolfo asked, sterner now.
Luis had to say something. As he opened his mouth, another voice cut through the darkness.
“He’s doing as God asked him,” said the old man, now standing in the bedroom doorway. “And we are going back to sleep, having not seen nor heard anything. Understood?”
No one said anything, for or against. Finally, Rodolfo lowered himself back onto his bedroll and closed his eyes. The others followed suit. The old man eyed Luis as if reconsidering his words. Then he disappeared into the bedroom and closed the door.
Luis resumed his work. This time he cut all the way through the door so he could noiselessly lower the jamb to the ground.
Cool night air rushed in around him as he turned the knob and stepped into the night. He closed it behind him and started running.
Luis had never seen the heavens like this. The longer he looked, the more stars he saw, layers revealing layers beyond and layers beyond that. It was a staggering sight, one he wished he could enjoy. After a day of anger it brought him a modicum of peace.
Knowing overseers might be on the road, he stayed close to the foothills. He had no idea how well they guarded the Blocks at night, but as there had been no reaction to the clatter of the lock, security obviously wasn’t as tight as he’d imagined. Still, no need to take chances.
Maria.
He couldn’t chase her from his mind. He wanted to believe she was alive and tried to con
vince himself of this. The car meant nothing. That voice in his head that told him the smoke on the horizon was from the Higuera farm was mistaken. He wanted badly to believe.
He estimated he’d been gone from the Blocks for almost forty-five minutes, doing his best to stay in the shadows while following the path he took to the fields each day. When he didn’t come upon the warehouses immediately, he worried he was off target.
Even on foot it shouldn’t have taken this long.
The stars and the outlines of the mountains to the east were his only guides. He made his best guess and headed in a new direction. When he finally reached one of the fences, he rejoiced and crossed it at a post. The fields couldn’t be far now.
Five minutes later he tripped on a cabbage. He’d entered the fields without realizing it. He wondered how close he was to the paved roads.
As if on cue, a pair of headlights appeared in the distance. Luis dove to the ground, flattening himself on the soil between the rows of fledgling cabbage. He waited for the vehicle to turn off, but it continued straight toward him.
He considered hurrying farther into the fields, putting some distance between him and the nearing vehicle, but that was just inviting the headlights to pick up his movement. He was trapped.
He froze, stiff as a corpse. The cabbages, a fall crop, weren’t to be harvested for another three months. The plants were barely three inches high. Even prone he was visible.
Lord, let them look the other way.
He pushed his face into the dirt but didn’t dare move any other part of his body. If he could have eaten the dirt, he would have. The light was already washing over the cabbage fields. It would be seconds before the pool reached him. He shut his eyes, but the white penetrated his eyelids as if they were clear glass. The sound grew louder.
Luis’s thoughts turned to the last moments of his brother’s life. Nicolas had been on his way home from seeing Osorio at Sacred Heart Church. He’d gone up the hill on Coronado Street and was crossing to Montana when the two bullets pierced his chest. No one knew if he’d seen the two men sitting in the car he’d just walked past or the one who emerged from the darkness on the other side of the street with the pistol.
