Power and Empire

47

The doors at the Sleeptight Inn had seen plenty of wear from police boots, so it didn’t take much effort with the flathead screwdriver Clark carried in his pocket. He’d anticipated having to make such an entry and already practiced on his own door. The key would have been slower.

Clark rolled a black balaclava over his face and pushed.

The screwdriver was still in his left hand, a nine-inch leather sap in the other. Palmetto had just hit the girl hard in the back of the head. She pitched face-first into the unmade bed, perfectly framed in front of two tripod-mounted cameras. Palmetto’s head snapped up at the noise behind him. Clark’s sap took him across the temple, the ten ounces of lead shot impacting bone and rattling teeth with a satisfying thud. He dropped like a sack of wet sand.

Clark registered a flash of movement to his left. He turned in time to see a very large black man with long dreadlocks barreling at him from the open bathroom door fifteen feet away. Focused as he was on Palmetto, the attack caught Clark flatfooted, driving him against a wall and knocking the wind from his lungs. Clark attempted to bring the sap into play, but the man was too close, robbing the swing of any power.

The man was at least forty years younger — though with Clark’s balaclava, he hadn’t figured that out. What he did know was that he was a half a head taller than Clark.

Clark exhaled quickly, relaxing his paralyzed diaphragm. He couldn’t do anything about the searing pain in his ribs.

“You messed up!” the man growled, stepping back to have a good look at the little man he was about to crush. “Parrot is about to put a chop on you that you never gonna forget!”

Clark stopped listening when he heard this guy was Parrot. The name had come up too many times — always in association with a bruised or broken girl. He’d read Blanca Limón’s statement, heard the stories about the brutal “choppings” this monster used to discipline his girls and keep them in line.

With his back to the girl on the bed, Clark feinted with his right hand, drawing the much larger man’s attention to the leather sap.

“Punk ass,” Parrot said, and chuckled. “I’m gonna take your little bat an—”

Clark wasted no time on words. Bounding forward, he drove the screwdriver straight up through the bottom of the big man’s jaw, shoving upward, aiming for the ceiling. The steel shaft of the screwdriver pierced Parrot’s tongue and impaled the soft palate at the back of his mouth. His teeth slammed together. His eyes flew open in shock. He made a vain attempt to grab at the screwdriver, but Clark batted his hand away with the sap. Clark pressed the attack, slamming the lead-filled sap into the man’s elbow as he fell.

Clark shot a quick glance toward a sound to his right and saw a black girl in her early teens peeking around the bathroom door. The fog of battle made it difficult to tell for sure, but Clark thought she had a bloody nose.

Parrot gurgled, trying to draw a breath around the screwdriver through his sinuses. Clark turned in time to see the man claw for a pistol in his waistband.

Enraged at the sight of a bleeding child, Clark bounded forward, kicking the handle of the screwdriver, driving the remainder of the shaft into the man’s brain with a sickening pop. Like his life, Parrot’s death was brutal, ugly, and loud, and it was over.

Clark spun, dropping the sap to the floor in favor of his .45. He needed to be sure Dorian Palmetto was still out of play. Palmetto wasn’t dead — but not for lack of effort on Clark’s part. He’d learned long before that knocking someone silly wasn’t all that difficult so long as the possibility of killing them in the process wasn’t taken off the table. Palmetto’s eyes were closed and a thin trickle of blood seeped from his ear, but unlike Parrot, he was still breathing. The girl on the bed was either out cold or pretending to be.

Clark secured Palmetto’s Glock in his waistband, and then, his own .45 held at low ready, inched sideways to bring the bathroom into view. Cutting the pie.

He found the black girl huddled alone on the floor beside the tub. Blood soaked through a bath towel she’d wrapped around her naked shoulders. Clark holstered the pistol and held up both hands.

“I’m a friend,” he said.

The girl hugged her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth, eyes clenched shut.

Clark shot a peek around the corner to make sure Palmetto and the girl were still out. They were, so he squatted down to be more or less on the same level as the cowering girl.

“What’s your name?”

She said nothing.

“Look.” Clark took a deep breath. He was hell at being mean. Tenderness was a little more difficult, so he decided he’d just be honest, and as kind as he knew how to be. “These men aren’t going to hurt you anymore. Let’s get you some clothes.”

Clark backed out of the bathroom, not wanting to pressure someone who was already shattered. A few moments later, he had both Palmetto’s and the purple-haired girl’s hands zip-tied behind their backs. He suspected this one was still pretending to be unconscious, but she was an unknown entity, so he decided to leave her restrained until she came to.

Technically, Clark was holding the girl against her will, but compared to the other crimes he’d committed — and those he intended to commit in the very near future — kidnapping a juvenile for her own safety seemed like a minor offense.

A quiet voice drew Clark’s attention back to the bathroom door.

“Jo,” the girl said. “My name’s Jo.”

She stared, eyes locked on the screwdriver jutting like a gruesome goatee from under Parrot’s chin.

“Hi, Jo,” Clark said softly. He moved quickly to cover the dead man with a sheet and then held the heavier bedspread out for the girl. The blood-soaked towel slipped off her shoulders as she took it, revealing an angry burn on her neck. A brand.

“You want to call your mom?” he asked softly.

“My mom’s dead,” the girl said. Her chin quivered as she spoke.

“Your dad?”

The girl shook her head. “Oh, hell no!” she said, sounding heartbreakingly like someone twice her age.

“The police, then,” Clark said.

Adrenaline from the fight began to ebb, leaving him suddenly sore and exhausted. His eyes misted over as he imagined the horrors the poor kid must have endured.

“Are you a policeman?” the girl asked.

“Not exactly.”

“The police stopped Parrot’s car twice, you know,” Jo said. “But they was always lookin’ for drugs.” She closed her eyes, starting to tremble at the memory. “Parrot, he just hug me in close to him and say in my ear, ‘You my drugs, Jo. You my drugs.’ Them cops didn’t ever even notice me, I don’t believe. Maybe they think I was his daughter or somethin’.”

Clark put the back of a hand to his eye, wiping away a tear, and realized he still had the black balaclava pulled over his head. “Don’t be scared.”

Jo shook her head. “You ain’t scary, mister,” she said. “Nobody looked at me and cried in an awful long time. Nobody at all…”

Jo went into the bathroom and put on a pair of shorts and a loose T-shirt while Clark examined the camera and computer setup.

By the time she came out, he had Dorian sitting upright, hands behind his back, a piece of duct tape across his mouth. On the other side of the bed, as far away as humanly possible without falling off, the purple-haired girl breathed peacefully, fear or embarrassment making her keep up the unconscious act.

“You like music?” Clark asked.

Jo nodded.

He’d pulled up some music his grandson liked on his cell phone and connected the earphones he carried for backup communication with other Campus members.

“How about… Imagine Dragons… or… Maroon 5?” In truth, Clark was just reading off a playlist. He had no idea what either of the bands sounded like, but if his grandson liked them, maybe the girl would, too. He imagined she hadn’t gotten to make a choice about anything in some time.

Jo almost smiled.

Clark pulled the only chair in the room away from the wall.

“How about you listen to the music,” he said. “I have some things I need to talk over with Dorian.”

Clark put the purple-haired girl’s earbuds back in her ears. Hopefully, her music would blot out what was about to happen. He was beginning to fear that something might be physically wrong with her, but she opened one eye, chickenlike, and shot a quick look at him before slamming it back shut again.

Across the room, Jo slumped low in the chair, suddenly a teenager again. She looked up suddenly and took out one earbud to give Clark a quizzical look. Her voice was calm now, matter-of-fact.

“You gonna kill him, mister?”

Dorian gave a muffled cry behind the duct tape. He began shaking all over, eyes wide as saucers.

“No,” Clark said. “We’re going to use his computer to let him call the police.”

“Cool,” Jo said, and went back to her music.

Clark ripped the tape from Dorian’s mouth and then walked back across the room to retrieve the screwdriver from Parrot’s jaw. It came out with a sickening croak, which only added to the psy ops. Palmetto was used to being in charge — the one calling the shots over kids like Magdalena Rojas, Jo, and the girl with the purple hair. Finding himself at the mercy of a determined killer like John Clark had him completely unglued.

Dorian’s chest heaved with sobs. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, I know that,” Clark said, leaning in close so the girls couldn’t hear. “What I’d really like to do is put a bullet in your brain pan. And to be honest, I still might. But I need some information first.”

All the air seemed to leave the man. “What do you want? I mean, just take the girls. They’re yours, man.”

Clark didn’t bother to wipe Parrot’s blood off the blade, but held it in plain view while he quizzed Palmetto in a harsh whisper about Matarife and Zambrano. Palmetto held nothing back, giving the location of Emilio Zambrano’s ranch as well as an address west of Dallas where Matarife might be hiding out.

Clark cocked his head to one side, holding the bloody screwdriver like he hadn’t decided what to do with it yet. “So you’re the one who found Magdalena?”

Palmetto nodded. At this point, he hadn’t figured out exactly what Clark’s game was. He decided wrong, and guessed a member of the competition. “Everyone’s always looking for a Magdalena.” His confidence was returning since Clark hadn’t killed him yet. “I gave her mother five grand. She has two other daughters, though. I’m happy to put you in touch—”

Clark pressed the business end of the screwdriver against Palmetto’s thigh and leaned in, feeling the satisfying scrape as the flathead nicked his femur.

The man yowled in pain and surprise, but Clark hit him before he could form words — GI Joe smacking a Ken doll.

Clark grimaced. “Geeze,” he said, showing mock concern. “You’re gonna want to have that looked at. I’m thinking Parrot might have had a few STDs.”

Palmetto swayed like he might pass out.

“Oh, no you don’t.” Clark left the screwdriver buried in the leg, but nudged the handle toward the centerline, using it like a lever.

Palmetto’s eyes lit up and he lurched, kicking his foot as if shocked.

“Felt that, did you?” Clark said. “That’s what we call your common peroneal nerve. We should stay away from that. It hurts like a son of a bitch.”

Palmetto clenched his jaw and nodded quickly.

“Where is Magdalena now?”

“Z… Z… Zambrano,” he said. “I heard he won her at auction.”

“Isn’t he the boss?”

“Yesss,” Palmetto said, biting his lip. His eyelids fluttered. “I… I think he bought her as a present for Chen.”

Clark moved the screwdriver involuntarily at that, scraping bone again.

“Stooooopppp!”

Both girls looked up and then just as quickly turned away.

“Why give a present to Chen?”

“She’s… his girlfriend.”

“Chen’s male.”

“N… Not Vincent,” Palmetto said, hyperventilating now. “Lily, his sister. Like I told you, she… she’s Zambrano’s partner. Brings triad money and muscle into the cartel.”

Clark withdrew the screwdriver. So Vincent Chen had a sister. This was all beginning to make sense — not complete sense, but at least the pieces were starting to fall into place. Lily Chen would possess information on her brother and his business dealings that would help Ding and the others. That was plenty enough reason to hunt her down. Clark shot a glance at the two girls, one of them branded and raped, the other having only narrowly avoided the same fate. He’d never admit it, not even to himself, but he didn’t need another reason.

“Let’s have the password for your computer,” he said.

Palmetto clenched his eyes shut, pressing tears through the lashes. “It’s… unlocked.”

“I’m working with geniuses here,” Clark said.

He used Dorian’s cell phone to call the Fort Worth Police Department Vice Section and requested an e-mail address to which he could make a video confession. He’d made enough Skype calls to his wife and grandson that it was a fairly simple matter to put through a video call — even for him.

Jo and the other girl listened to their music, eyes closed.

Clark stood just off camera with the bloody screwdriver as Dorian Palmetto began to spill his guts to the female detective with the Fort Worth Police Department. He couldn’t help grinning behind the black balaclava. Vengeance shouldn’t feel this good. But it did.

He looked at his watch. The coppers would be tracing the computer’s IP address and should be here in short order.

Time to make a call.