Fields of Wrath (Luis Chavez Book 1) (9 page)

“Judson,” he said, setting his teeth to betray more pain than he felt. “It occurs to me that I have too many cases as it is to pursue the same wild-goose chase twice.”

Judson relaxed his grip on Michael’s wrist and gently withdrew his hand.

“I knew you were smart,” Judson said, already walking away.

Michael made it home early that night. The older children, Jillian and Denny, were getting ready for bed. The youngest, Marlo, was already under the covers. It was the first time he’d been home before lights-out in weeks.

“Two books!” Marlo demanded after Michael finished the first and got up to leave.

“Daddy has to get some work done,” Michael protested. “My day’s not over yet.”

“Please,”
Marlo insisted. A command more than a request.

Though the youngest, Marlo, had zeroed in on her father’s absentee-father guilt faster than her siblings.

“Short book,” Michael agreed.

After extracting himself from Marlo’s room a few minutes later, he ran into Helen coming out of Denny’s room down the hall.

“Are you working tonight?”

“I have to answer a bunch of e-mails, but I’ll be down in a minute.”

Helen headed downstairs to watch television as Michael went to his office. He pulled his laptop from his bag. He spent the first few minutes replying to the forty or so waiting e-mails but then moved to the doorway. He could hear the television drone on below, Helen watching a reality show about a group of obnoxious realtors, two of whom she’d worked with through her own budding agency.

Michael closed the door and returned to his laptop. He logged in to an account where three welcoming e-mails sat alone and unopened in the inbox. There were no sent messages or junk mail. In the drafts folder, however, sat 262 unsent messages.

He opened this and found a long stretch of e-mails differentiated only by date. They had nothing in their subject or address lines. He hit the date button and inverted the order so the oldest appeared on top. He opened the first e-mail and found it as expected: all business. It was from Annie, as she had been the one who’d suggested using this method after hearing it was how terrorists communicated without leaving a trail. The e-mail went further in depth into the case she’d touched on when they first met, and she’d attached a handful of documents.

Michael looked it over, deleted it, and moved on.

The next few e-mails were a contrast in styles, Annie going on in depth about what she’d uncovered, while his replies were terse and off-putting. No matter what she offered up, he came back with requests for information he didn’t think she could possibly uncover in hopes of dissuading her from continuing. Then there’d come a follow-up e-mail with precisely what he’d requested. Michael watched himself becoming invested.

He was almost halfway through when he came to a draft with only three words in the body: “Pics from yesterday.” Attached were six cell phone photos of the two of them in postcoital amusement. The first showed Annie nude, smiling as she sat astride him. The second was of the two of them, the camera held over their heads, as they leaned close to one another.

Christ, she’s beautiful,
Michael thought.

The third was the keeper. Annie on her back alongside him, head on the pillow, eyes staring straight back at him. This one wasn’t playful; it was all emotion. Her big brown eyes were imploring him,
Now that you’ve seen me at my most vulnerable, please don’t hurt me.

Michael tried to remember what had happened next. He’d probably put the camera aside and kissed her. More than any other woman he’d ever known, Annie Whittaker loved to be kissed. They’d make love for hours, lips locked the entire time. After years of dutiful married sex with Helen, a woman any man would say was far more beautiful than Annie, it was a godsend.

He stared at the photo for a long moment, committing it to memory, then deleted it. He went through the rest of the draft e-mails, deleting the ones sans attachments without a second glance. For the ones with photos, he’d give them a last look before deleting those as well.

“We NEED to find some time to hang out this week,” said one message with a photo attached showing Annie, again nude, her favorite sex toy inserted in her vagina. Her mouth was open in orgasm. It was almost more crass than erotic, but that wasn’t the point. She’d been thinking about him. That was turn-on enough.

He deleted it and moved on. He was almost done before he found a draft from only a couple of weeks back. When they met, it was almost always for either sex or case-related business. The four photos attached here were from one of their rare outings, a day they’d met on a beach north of Malibu. They were supposed to be arranging the transfer of Santiago into protective custody, but that had been handled in five minutes. As it was a beautiful day, they’d gone for a walk up the beach. He’d shown her a trick his grandmother taught him for counting birds. She’d sat on the sand and wrapped his arms around her as they watched the tide come in.

Two of the pictures were ones they’d taken of themselves, heads pressed together. The other two were of her walking close to the water. In that moment there’d been no case, no DA’s office, no nonprofit legal aid office in Camarillo, and no Helen, Denny, Marlo, or Jillian.

God, he’d loved her.

He stared at her image for the last time, deleted the e-mail, and deactivated the account. He deleted the browser’s history, then shut down the laptop, sinking into his chair, hot with guilt.

XII

For no reason he could divine, Luis’s fourth day in the fields was comparatively easy. He was still in tremendous pain, but it was somehow more manageable. He felt his muscles strengthening. He learned when to drink water and when to sweat. He still wasn’t exactly a fast picker, but his numbers improved.

Slowly he began to reach out to the other workers, drawing them into conversation about where they were from, where they’d worked, and who they’d met. This was where his priest training helped, as he’d never been naturally social. His schools growing up, though almost entirely Hispanic, were divided into two groups. There were Chicanos—those of Mexican descent born in Los Angeles, who were well on their way to assimilation. Then there were the more recent immigrants, those fresh off the boat, some of whom might’ve only been in the States for months if not weeks or days. To differentiate the two, the Chicanos borrowed slurs from the whites, calling the new arrivals beaners, spics, or wetbacks. This ensured that, despite appearances, they didn’t have a goddamn thing in common with these dregs of society.

It had been important to him and his friends to speak English, dress well, listen to American hip-hop, and watch American television and movies so no one would think they were some fresh-off-the-boat beaners who still listened to cúmbia or
banda
. Felt like God’s punishment that he was now walking in the shoes of those he once derided.

That evening the brother of one of the workers came by to offer a ride to anyone who wanted to go into town to get supplies. Seeing one more chance to be social, Luis asked to go, volunteering to pick up items for those who wanted to stay behind.

Eight men went, two squeezing in with the driver, while six ringed the truck bed. It was already cold, but in the back of the speeding truck it was downright frigid. Smiles of shared misery were passed around as the truck bounced its way toward the nearest town, eschewing main roads for fear of tickets. They passed a Walmart and two large chain grocery stores before the truck pulled into the parking lot of a smaller
mercado
that seemed more butcher’s shop than supermarket.

There hadn’t been much conversation on the way, but the experience gave those in the back a temporary sense of camaraderie. Sensing it was now or never, Luis turned to one of the workers who’d been around the fields the longest.

“Did Santiago have a girlfriend?”

Rather than suspicion, the question was met with a laugh.

“Why? You thinking of swooping in there?”

“Nah, nah. Alberto mentioned a sister. I wondered if he had a girl, too. Hadn’t seen anybody around.”

“He might’ve, but he never brought her out here. He did go off somewhere sometimes and came back looking like he’d had a piece. No idea, though.”

“What about Odilia?” Luis tried.

“Odilia? Who’s that?” the guy said without evasion.

“A girl who worked Santiago’s fields.”

The man laughed.

“Ain’t nobody named Odilia worked these fields. I couldn’t tell you the name of every man that worked the farm. I don’t even know
your
name. But women? I can even tell you their eye color and if they got all their teeth. Front ones at least. And there’s never been a picker named Odilia.”

“You sure about that?” Luis pressed. “Twenties? Slender? Brown hair and eyes. Fairly pretty.”

The man stopped cold, hand on the market’s door.

“Oh,
Odilia
,” he deadpanned. “The only hot chick who ever picked a strawberry. Yeah, forgot about her. Attitude for miles, wouldn’t even talk to me, had a bunch of guys in food trucks deliver her lunch every day ’cause that’s how rare a creature she was. Sorry, Charlie. No such monster.”

He walked in, leaving Luis even more baffled than before. If Odilia hadn’t worked at Santiago’s farm, how did they know each other? More importantly, why did she have what appeared to be a form from the state saying she did?

He followed the others into the market, not seeing the group of men gathered around the checkout stand. The silence should’ve registered with him even subconsciously, but it didn’t. In fact, he’d almost bumped into them when a hand shot out, grabbed his arm, and yanked him away.

“What the—?”

“Shut up, dumbfuck!” his friend from the truck ride whispered.

Luis looked back at the group buying cases of beer, bottles of water, and paper plates and was confused. There were six of them, all Hispanic, all well-built, all with tattoos. He thought they must be bikers or something until he saw the gun sticking out of the waistband of the one bringing up the rear.

“Oh shit,” he said, following the other one back. “Are they about to rob the place?”

His companion gaped at him with incredulity. He gripped Luis’s head and turned it to face in a different direction.

“I thought you were from Mexico,” he said. “Must’ve been a long time ago, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you know not to be looking at the guy with a gun no one notices? Those are the guys from the Manzana.”

The Blocks,
Luis translated. “Yeah, I feel you,” he said.

He followed his friend down an aisle, but only so he could get a better glimpse of the men up front. He finally found a security mirror over a beer cooler and stared at their reflections.

That they all had tattoos wasn’t a surprise if they were hard-asses. But what he found unusual was that a lot of their ink had been altered or covered up. A Virgin Mary became a tiger. The crossed
L
and
A
of the Los Angeles Dodgers was woven into an American flag. A large statue of Quetzalcoatl was turned into a sleeve of tribal art. The unaltered ones were mostly military. They were blended, marked over.

Like the ones on the men at the rectory. The ones who’d taken Odilia.

He remembered something. Tattoos were okay in the army, just not gang ones. So to join up, whether to get out of the life or at the
suggestion
of a judge, the tattoos had to be reinked. So what did that make these guys? Gangsters turned soldiers turned . . . what? Kidnappers? Field overseers? Armed enforcers?

He had to follow them.

After their leader, a sinewy fellow with sharp facial features and copper-colored eyes, paid the bill, the group left. Luis trailed after them, making it halfway to the check stand before the man who had driven him there and his brother intercepted him.

“Hey, excuse me,” Luis said.

But the two men didn’t budge. The man Luis had asked about Odilia stood nearby.

“Can’t let you do that, man.”

“Hey, I just wanted to have a word . . .”

When the driver looked like he might coldcock him, Luis backed down. Through the front window, he saw the gunmen climb into a pair of pickup trucks and drive away into the night.

Once they were gone, the driver’s brother took Luis by the arm.

“You can come back with us tonight, even work another day tomorrow. But you’re gone by sunset. Got it?”

Luis felt the eyes of the other workers on his back and knew there was no way around this. Amateur mistake. This might’ve been his one shot. How could he have been so stupid?

When the pickup returned to Santiago’s farm an hour later, a blue Toyota Camry was parked outside the shack in the middle of the fields. A light was on inside. Luis thought he saw a woman through the window.

Maria Higuera,
he realized.

It had been a week of fitful sleep for Maria. Following Santiago’s death, there was the difficulty of transporting his body back to the States (a helpful mortician in Chatsworth who specialized in cross-border funerals eventually guided her through the necessary bribes), dealing with the police in two different countries, and then worrying the violence visited upon her brother might blow back on the rest of her family. She’d heard from a number of people in relation to Santiago’s farm, but the only one she’d talked to was Alberto Ocampo. Her brother had mentioned him several times as one of his most trusted associates. So when he came down for Santiago’s funeral, they’d spoken at length about what he needed from her in the short term to finish the harvest.

She’d understood her presence would be required soon but had put off driving up to the farm for the first part of the week. When Thursday rolled around and Alberto rang again to see when she might make it up, she packed Miguel off to a willing neighbor, got in her car, and made the drive. Though she knew Alberto and the other workers would be asleep by the time she arrived, she wanted to be there at first light to speak with him before he got too busy in the fields.

But when she awoke that morning, it was into a feeling of cold terror. The smells were unfamiliar, as were the sounds. The bed was not her own. The sun came in not only through the window but from the ceiling and the walls. Though wrapped in blankets, her body was covered in gooseflesh.

Her heart raced as panic set in. She stumbled out of bed, grabbing a table to steady herself, then remembered where she was.

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered, getting to her feet.

She wanted to shower, but the tap in the bathroom brought only cold water. She settled on a change of clothes, ate a cereal bar she’d tucked in her purse, and emerged from the shack to find the fields already buzzing with activity.

As if this was what he had been waiting for, Alberto jogged over.

“Good morning,” he said, wiping his hands on a pink handkerchief he pulled from his pocket. “How did you sleep?”

“Santiago told me how cold it could get even in the summer, but I never believed him.”

“We’d invite him to our fires, but he stayed here. I think it was a matter of pride. If he slept cold, it gave him a reason to get up in the morning. Also, and you’d know him better than I did, I think he liked being alone.”

He did,
Maria recalled. “He considered you family,” she said, and she meant it as a compliment. She was surprised to see the big man quake and tremble, until she realized he was holding back tears. She reached out to him, and he half embraced her, half collapsed on her shoulder.

“He didn’t deserve this,” Alberto whispered.

“No, he didn’t,” she sighed. “He wasn’t perfect, but that just seemed to make him forgive the imperfections of others. He wanted to succeed, but it didn’t mean anything to him if he couldn’t bring all of you with him.”

After Alberto recovered, he took her on a tour of the fields.

“As I told you on the phone, the morning after he was found, no one had any idea what to do. But the worst thing imaginable for all of us was to see his crops die, too. So we continued the harvest.”

“Were you able to get the buyers to give you an advance on the harvest?”

“I wasn’t,” Alberto admitted. “But then we heard from Henry Marshak.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s a big wheel in this area. Well, a big wheel all over the place. His family owns the largest factory farms in the state. Santiago used to work for the Marshaks. Their company sold him this piece of land. When he found out what happened, he offered to help. First by sending some of his workers, and then by floating us a loan so we could keep going.”

“I think one of his people called the house as well. I should thank him,” she said, staring out over the rows. “How is the harvest going?”

“That’s another tragic part of all this. The harvest is going well. Best in the years I’ve been here. All Santiago’s hard work the past few seasons getting the field in shape was paying off this year. He knew it, too. It was all coming together.”

Two hours later Maria sat at the shack’s kitchen table, going through her brother’s files. For someone who kept such meticulous records, she was surprised that he’d store them in a building so open to the elements.

What she found put her mind at ease. He’d always assured her that he kept an honest shop, didn’t employ illegal labor, and didn’t cut corners. Though her understanding of small businesses was little to none, the paperwork seemed to back this up.

“I’m sorry about your brother.”

The voice startled Maria. She whirled around to see a young man standing just outside the doorway.

“Oh. Thank you,” she said.