“What?” I said, laughing.
Parker nodded somberly.
“I’m not kidding. Like a general, he referred to the cartel’s current troop strengths and provisions, its recruiting efforts. Ho Chi Minh was mentioned often and fondly.”
“Ho Chi Minh? Now, please. I know he’s a threat, Emily, but Perrine’s out of his cocaine-smuggling mind. Or he’s just trying to get his guys going. There’s no way he can operate in the US the way he’s been doing it in Mexico. He knows that would be suicide.
“Believe me, Emily. This guy is smart. You saw him there with his manicure and his silk bespoke attire. His tastes are pure French. He’s a gourmet, a real bon vivant with joie de vivre. He likes being alive.”
“What you say is true, Mike, but he’s making some pretty audacious moves nonetheless,” Emily said. “Those two cops in El Monte were blown to pieces by highly trained paramilitaries-mercenaries, probably. Which is troublesome when you consider that some of our analysts are saying the cartels employ upward of fifty or sixty thousand people.
“Plus, you heard the speech. Drugs seem to be almost beside the point. He’s high on his own power. He seems like he’s drifted from egotistical drug smuggler into megalomaniac world conqueror. He’s French, all right. It seems he thinks he’s Napoleon.”
“You have a point there,” I said.
“Well, the good news is, this really isn’t the first rodeo for the US military against these narco nuts,” Emily said, twirling a pen in her fingers. “In Colombia in the eighties, Pablo Escobar actually went to full-blown war with the Colombian government. He blew up government buildings and an airliner before the Colombians asked for our help. The first George Bush sent in Delta Force, which tracked down the maniac for the Colombian army, who ultimately took him out.”
“You’re right. That’s true,” I said, brightening. “I forgot all about that. You’ve been around awhile, Parker. Were you involved in the Pablo Escobar takedown?”
She turned and stabbed me in the arm with the pen.
“Ow!”
“Screw you, Bennett,” she said, affronted. “I’m younger than you are. In the nineties, I was in high school, dancing to Depeche Mode.”
“It was a joke, Parker,” I said, rubbing my arm.
“About my age,” she said.
“My bad,” I said. “How about a toast?” I said, raising my coffee cup. “To history repeating itself.”
“Hear, hear,” Parker said, tapping Styrofoam. “To Perrine in a body bag.”
CHAPTER 35
The morning after his dad left, Brian Bennett opened his eyes as he heard soft footsteps in the hallway. After a moment, the bedroom door slowly opened and Grandpa Seamus poked his head in.
Uh-oh. Chore time. Has to be, Brian thought, immediately shutting his eyes and making what he hoped was a natural-sounding snore.
“You’re up, Brian. Excellent,” Seamus whispered as he tugged hard on Brian’s earlobe. “Get dressed and grab Eddie and Jane, would you? I need to talk to you goslings in the kitchen about something.”
“Are we in trouble?” Brian whispered back. “I already told Mary Catherine I was sorry about the strike, about a thousand times.”
“No, no. It’s nothing like that,” Seamus said. “I just need to talk to you. You have five minutes. Move your butt.”
Seamus had an apron on over his priest suit and had some scrambled-egg tortillas waiting for them when they entered the kitchen. Brian hesitated at the door when he smelled the bacon. Bacon was trouble. The bribe of bacon meant they were about to be made to do something even more heinous than he had imagined.
“There you are! Carpe diem! Come in now, Brian. Be not afraid,” Seamus said.
“What’s up, Gramps?” Brian said, finally taking a seat.
“Funny you ask that question, Brian,” Seamus said, raising his bacon fork. “I just got a call from my priest friend in town. Father Walter needs help in accomplishing a corporal work of mercy this morning, and I think I’ve found just the people for the job.”
I knew it, Brian thought, rubbing his tired eyes. All aboard. Next stop, Chore City. He wasn’t sure what the word corporal meant, but work was something he had become infinitely familiar with in the family’s rural exile.
“Now,” Seamus said jovially, “who can tell me what the corporal works of mercy are?”
“Visit imprisoned people like us,” Brian mumbled.
“Very good, Brian. Visit the imprisoned. Anyone else?”
“Um, clothe the naked?” Eddie said, trying to keep a straight, pious face, and failing.
“Yes, Eddie. Clothe the naked. Why did I think you of all people would remember that one? Anyone else?”
“Feed the hungry,” Jane said, eyeing the bacon.
“Bingo, Jane. Feed the hungry. That’s the one Father Walter needs our help with. Father just received a large shipment of donated canned goods and needs help with distribution. We have to go to the rectory and run the supplies over to a remote food bank in a tiny, poor part of the county and dole them out. I thought it would be a nice opportunity for the three of you. I know you’ve been complaining about not getting out.”
“But what about Dad?” Eddie said. “Didn’t he say we have to stay on the farm? No exceptions?”
“I’m in charge, Eddie,” Seamus said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “People need our help, and we’re going to help them. Evil wins when good men do nothing.”
“We’re not men, though, Gramps. We’re kids,” Brian complained. “And I thought you said we weren’t in trouble.”
Seamus smiled as he lifted a pan off the stove and brought it over.
“Thanks for volunteering to help, Brian,” he said as he piled some bacon onto Brian’s plate.
“There’s a special place in heaven for young saints like yourself.”
CHAPTER 36
The food bank was in a little town called Sunnyville, a few miles south of Susanville.
Getting out of the van with Seamus, Jane wondered if the town’s name was supposed to be ironic. Because there wasn’t anything sunny about it. It wasn’t even a town, really. Just a collection of ramshackle houses, a barnlike building that looked like a bar of some kind, and a place that sold snowmobiles and dirt bikes.
What it looked like was something from a serial killer movie, she thought. Right down to the creepy, weird sound of an unseen wind chime tinkling as they got out of the station wagon. Even the shedlike building they used for the food bank looked weird, she thought as she grabbed a case of Chef Boyardee. It looked like a caboose.
The caboose of a train that was smart enough to cut out of this godforsaken place a long, long time ago, Jane thought.
They were going up the stairs with the heavy boxes when she saw that there was another collection of buildings, to the rear of the food bank. It was a trailer park. A huge, excessively run-down one. As she watched, there was a sudden roar, and a heavy woman riding a motorcycle shot out from between two of the decrepit structures.
If they got out of this alive, she’d never complain about the farm again, she decided as she dropped off the cans and went back for more.
It took them about half an hour just to get the boxes inside the food bank caboose and unpacked. The food was mostly divided between canned stuff-Campbell’s soups, SpaghettiOs, Del Monte fruit-and dry goods: macaroni and cheese, ramen noodles, hot cocoa. When they were done arranging the shelves, it looked like a grocery store.
A line of people from the trailer park formed quickly. It was obvious they were in bad straits. Whites, blacks, Hispanics. All of them poor. All of them about as desperate as migrant workers out of work got.
Jane and Eddie ran around behind the counter, putting together the orders, while Seamus and Brian worked clipboards, checking IDs of people who were on the church’s food bank giving list.