They turned and walked the rest of the way to C-Block without conversation. Lopes was thinking she was exactly what he needed in his life and did a mental eye roll as he thought it. Just like all the others had been exactly what he needed, until he didn’t, or maybe to be more honest, until they had had enough of his shit. Relationships were not his field of expertise.
She keyed open the door and held it for him. He saw Spooky sitting at a metal table that was bolted into the cinderblock walls. Before entering, he glanced at her chest but there was no name tag.
She noticed. “Lopez. Just like yours, only with a Z. We didn’t misspell ours to try and hide our heritage.”
Still grinning, he said, “Well okay then, Miss Lo-pez. Thank you. I appreciate the escort, and I doubt I’ll forget your name.”
She turned her mouth up to feign a smile, but it as quickly disappeared. “I’ll be waiting for you right out here,” she said, and nodded toward a bench in the hallway. “Just tap on the door when you’re done.”
“Tap it?”
She frowned. “Yeah, the door. It’s the only thing you’ll be tapping up here in The Bay, that I can guarantee you.”
He smiled and entered the room, listening as the heavy metal door closed solidly behind him.
He nodded at the inmate who sat waiting. “What’s up, Spooky?”
Cortez looked over at me as we stopped in front of the two-story Valencia home. It looked like all the others on this block and all the other blocks in the city, with its natural tones and subtle accents. It was the developers’ way to pretend there was no harm in cutting down the mountains and trees to build the sprawling and endless tracts of homes. He said, “One more thing about this guy, this is apparently his third wife.”
“You sure he’s not a cop?”
“No shit, right?”
“Please tell me none of the priors are dead.”
“First one’s in Arizona, no kids. Second is down in San Diego. They had a daughter together who’s sixteen now. I haven’t talked to either one yet, just checked to make sure they were alive and accounted for.”
“I thought you said he had an adult daughter who might be here?”
“She’s apparently the wife’s daughter from a previous marriage. That’s the best I can figure.”
“Anything else?”
He shook his head. “Nah, partner, that’s about it so far. Not even sure what he does for a living, nothing came up from the Department of Labor on him. There’s a lack of information about this guy.”
“That’s odd.”
“Or a good sign.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, maybe he’s self-employed.”
“Maybe he was the housewife.”
We stepped out of the car and met near the trunk. I said, “You mentioned she does real estate, do you know who she worked for?”
“Not yet,” he answered, while quickly appraising the neighborhood, “but I bet she made a good wage up here.”
I nodded in agreement, thinking about the expansion of the valley over the years. I had grown up in the area when Valencia didn’t exist. It was Newhall, Saugus, and Canyon Country. There was Castaic north and west, and Val Verde further west, but nobody cared about either of those two towns back then. Probably still don’t, other than to know it’s where most of the criminals come from. I lived on a dirt road in Newhall. Lyons Avenue separated us from the farms, Bunny Luv. They specialized in carrots. But the farms were no longer here and the mountains where I hunted quail and dove as a boy were now littered with near million-dollar homes, swimming pools, and garages full of BMWs, Audis, and Mercedes. I couldn’t imagine where all the money came from.
I looked up at the home we were about to enter, a two-story with a four-car garage and professionally maintained landscaping. I guessed nobody in these neighborhoods owned a mower. There were probably some residents who didn’t own a vacuum. We were up on the hill in the newer tracts, some of which were gated and had contracted security to protect the residents from people abroad, those from Castaic and Val Verde, maybe old Newhall where I grew up.
Though the truth be known, with the major expansion over the years, there were now plenty of mandated Section 8 housing developments which brought their fair share of people who never worked and never planned to work. They worked the system and lived comfortably on the taxpayers’ tab, receiving housing and food subsidies and other gratuities for the sins of our predecessors. There were plenty of parolees and probationers now living just down the road from these otherwise safe neighborhoods, and the crime rates would be more reflective of this fact if not for politics. Santa Clarita Sheriff’s station notoriously discouraged proactive policing because an arrest reflected a crime, and the once-labeled one of the nation’s ten safest, would not stand for high crime rates. I wondered if the animal who killed and dismembered the yet-to-be-identified woman was a transplanted resident of this once-safe city.
Which is why the sheriff and my captain were in a dither over this murder. If she had disappeared from Compton and been found in Long Beach there would barely be mention of it, with or without a head and hands. But this was Santa Clarita, the yuppiest city in the county, previously one of the safest cities in the nation, and it mattered. Politics.
We turned to head up the walk toward the front door. I straightened my tie while saying to Ray, “I’ll keep the notes, buddy.”
“Sounds good, partner. Thanks.”
Lopes had his hands folded behind his head and was waiting for Spooky to start talking. He had just asked the generic What do you have for me question, but as he did there was movement that stopped just outside the room they occupied. Lopes could hear keys rattling and the conversation of at least two male guards. When the footsteps continued and then faded away, he nodded to Spooky who sat waiting. “Well?”
“Look, Lopes, you’ve got to give me some love, man, all the information I’m giving you, and I don’t get shit in here. An hour a day outside my cell, and the store comes around once a week but I ain’t even got money for a fucking candy bar, eh? Best I can do is trade in a book or two and maybe a magazine for something new to read. And the chaplain, he kicks down pencils and paper, envelopes too so I can send some kites home, but then I don’t have no money for the fucking stamps, eh. I need some jack, man, some money on my books, eh.”
“I’ll put forty bucks on your books when I leave, if you quit whining like a little bitch and get to it.”
Spooky squinted his eyes, but not for long as Lopes drilled into him with his.
“Look, I know the mob’s been active, more so than usual. The fucking murders are jumping off in L.A., but I haven’t heard shit from you in weeks. What the fuck is going on?”
“It ain’t like I can call you, eh.”
“Okay, man, fair enough. But I’m here now, so get to it. What’s going on that has everything so hot down there?”
“Wait, Lopes, I need another favor too.”
He rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ, man . . . what?”
“My little girl, Vero—”
“Vero?”
“Veronica, we call her Vero . . . See, my baby mama been shacked up with Peanut from La Puente, eh, and that homie, he ain’t got no respect for his elders, man. He been dissin’ me to my ol’ lady—my ex ol’ lady—and I got that back in a kite from some of my other homies, and that shit ain’t right, eh.”
They always needed something.
“Get to it, man, what’s the problem?”
“It’s just that she—Vero—she’s just barely a teenager now, like fourteen or thirteen, eh, and I don’t want her going down that road too, like her fucking hood-rat mama. Bitch’s old man—this Peanut motherfucker—is dealing dope and banging and shit, bringing all that shit around my little girl. I just want him to go away, man, that’s all. Can you get the narcs on him or something, put a case on him, man? Eh?”
“I’ll look into it,” Lopes said as he leaned forward and hovered over his notebook with a pen he pulled from behin
d his ear. “What’s your old lady’s name again?”
“Silvia Banuelos.”
He wrote it down. “And who’s Peanut?”
“Peanut.”
He looked up from his notes. “Yeah, I got that, but what’s his fucking name?”
Spooky shrugged. “That’s all I know, eh. Peanut from La Puente. Motherfucker got a crooked eye. He be looking at you, but he be looking over there too. You ask a motherfucker what he lookin’ at, he prolly don’t know. Prolly too much PCP or maybe he got shot in the head, I don’t know. But that’s all I got, Lopes, ‘cause we don’t kick it with Puente, eh.”
Lopes smirked at the gangster. “So why don’t you have him taken care of, Spooky? You don’t have any horsepower now?”
Spooky slurped his saliva, which would have been considered disrespectful to Lopes in another environment, on the streets in front of other homies or cops. Spooky slouched in his chair and looked away. “He’s mobbed up, eh.”
Lopes dropped his pen on the table. “You’re telling me this guy, Peanut—Peanut from La Puente—is mobbed up? I never heard of him.”
Spooky sat up. “Well not like mobbed up, mobbed up, you know . . . just more like an associate. He pays his taxes and puts in work for La Eme, eh. All those fools in Puente be puttin’ in work, eh.”
Lopes studied him for a minute. He glanced at the convict’s arms and neck, curious if there were any new tattoos he hadn’t noticed. He had photos in a file showing every tattoo the gangster had, a collection from every time he had been booked or interviewed on a case. He never had the black hand, the tattoo of La Eme, and Lopes doubted he had it now either. There was an hour glass on the back of his hand that Lopes didn’t remember, but he might not have paid particular attention to it either. He remembered the important tattoos, the ink that told the story of a gangster’s life: the number thirteen on his neck, below the corner of one eye, and again on a forearm. Thirteen for the letter ‘M’, which has nothing to do with marijuana as many will have you believe, but an indication of his gang showing respect and allegiance to the Mexican mafia. His other tattoos, Sureno, Hazard, L.A., were all indications of where he was from: Big Hazard street gang in Los Angeles, Southern California. He had tear drops tattooed from the corner of his other eye that denoted the number of times he had been sent up to the big house. There were four now, and he was twenty-nine years old.
“Okay, man,” Lopes finally said. “I’ll see about your little girl, and I’ll put forty bucks on your books. Now this better be fucking good man or I’m going to beat your ass and give you a crooked eye to match your homeboy’s, Mr. Peanut.”
“He ain’t my homeboy, eh.”
“Get to it.”
Little Spooky looked around, but there was nothing to see. Habit, or instinct, he didn’t want to be seen or heard talking to the cops. He let out a breath and seemed to slump into his chair. He looked Lopes in the eyes and said, “You ain’t seen nothing yet, man, the mob’s making some big moves, and it’s going to get bloody.”
“What’s it about?”
“Money. What it’s always about? Money and power, same thing, eh? But the mob’s been taking it to the community, eh, not just fucking around on the streets anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re muscling in on legit businesses, taking cuts. Motherfuckers don’t wanna play, they be gettin’ whacked. These ain’t gangsters and dope dealers and shit, these are regular folks, white motherfuckers too. They ain’t just sitting down in the hood no more, there’s too much money to be made for all that bullshit.”
Lopes leaned back in his chair. “Give me some specifics.”
“I know they got enough going on that they’re going outside.”
“Outside, where? What do you mean?”
“You know, man, contracts. I don’t know a lot, I only know that it ain’t the homies putting in all the work now, eh. They got some of the hits contracted out.”
“How do you know all this?”
Spooky sucked his teeth, “Damn, Lopes, how the fuck you think I know, eh? What kind of fucking question is that?”
Davey Lopes came to his feet and lunged at the inmate who instinctively drew backwards and brought his hands up to shield his face. Lopes grabbed his collar with his left hand and held his right hand cocked, aimed at the convict’s face.
“Don’t you ever suck your fucking teeth at me again, ese, or you’ll be spitting Chiclets all the way back to your cell.”
Still leaned back, his eyes showing regret, maybe apprehension, his hands still guarding his face, Little Spooky said, “Damn, Lopes . . . goddamn, man, I didn’t mean no disrespect, eh?”
He released his grip and backed off but not too far. “Let me tell you something, you little asshole . . . You may be bad with your homies, out on the street, packing heat or having backup, but I’d tear you to fucking pieces, rip your skinny little arms off your body and beat you to death with them. I won’t tolerate any of that gangster disrespect bullshit out of you. You got it?”
Spooky nodded, looking away.
“This little agreement we have here is that you provide the information, I keep your name out of our RICO. Sooner or later, all your homies are going to know you’re a punk. I already fucking know it, and you best not forget it.”
Spooky was straightening his jumpsuit, frowning now.
Lopes walked to the door, paused and came back to the table, still watching the inmate, maybe now more than ever. Lopes knew how to handle the gangsters and keep their respect. And it wasn’t by being nice to them. He sat down and said, “Okay, let’s try this again. What’s this about work being farmed out?”
“Huh?”
“You said others were putting in work for Eme.”
“Yeah, it’s what I heard just the other day. They were talking about it—”
“Who’s they?”
“Lemme think . . . It was some of the eses on my row, Trigger, Sleepy, Lil’ Oso . . . I dunno, some other vatos too. Casper from Florence, I know he was one of them talking. I remember him saying something about it. They were all like, ‘Who’s seen la lista, eh?’ and one of the homies said, ‘Shit, man, they ain’t putting out the list no more, ese, now that they be contracting it out.’”
Lopes narrowed his brows, skeptical of what the gangster said. “You’re telling me there’s no more list?”
He nodded with just a slight lift of his chin. “Something like that. I mean, they still have the word out on which gangsters or neighborhoods got the green light on ‘em, but they ain’t putting down any of this other shit. It’s too hot, man, the lista seems to always get back to the cops, so they ain’t gonna do it for this new deal they got going.”
Lopes grinned and Spooky grinned back at him. Lopes knew they were both likely thinking the same thing. The list—la lista, as it is famously known among gangsters and cops alike—would be compromised by gangsters such as Spooky, who would provide it to cops such as Lopes.
The List would have names of gang members, and sometimes entire gangs, who were to be targeted for hits. The severity of the hit would be designated by terms such as soft candy or hard candy, which was the difference between an assault or murder. All members of La Eme and their associate gangs—which were almost all Southern California Hispanic street gangs—were to act on the list at any given opportunity, regardless of the circumstances. It didn’t matter if the would-be attacker was outnumbered or if a cop was standing ten feet away; if the opportunity presented itself for any gang member in good standing with La Eme to take out someone on the list, they were to act on it without hesitation. If they did not, they too would be placed on the list.
Some of the ways one could end up on the list included snitching, not paying taxes on their dope sales, or violating any other law of arguably the most powerful prison gang in the country, La Eme.
The room was silent as Lopes jotted a few notes. He looked up and said, “Who are they using then, if they’re contracting this shit out?
The blacks, white boys? . . . They using the A.B.?”
Spooky sneered. “Shit, the mob ain’t gonna have no mayates putting in work for them, no fucking way. Maybe the white boys, yeah, the Aryan Brotherhood, I dunno, eh.”
“Okay, well that’s your new assignment. I want more detail on that shit. You’ve got a month. I’ll be back up here in June when the weather’s nicer and I can work on my tan, sitting at the pool over in that hotel drinking cold beer.”
Spooky didn’t say anything. They stared at each other for half a minute. Finally, Lopes smiled.
“What happened to your sense of humor, Spook?”
“Spook-y.”
“You’re getting a little uppity, you know it?”
He didn’t say anything.
“One last thing—I almost forgot why I came up here. There was a double murder in El Monte, couple weeks ago . . . what do you know about it?”
Spooky glanced to the wall but then came back. “I heard something about it, I think maybe it was just a rival gang thing, eh?”
Lopes studied him for a minute, looking into his eyes for the truth. He felt Spooky was holding out on him. He got up from the chair and collected his notebook and pen. “You’re holding back on me, man. I’m not going to mess around with you on this. I’m coming back in a month for some other shit, and when I do, I’ll pull you out for another chat. You’d best have some details for me then, or the deal will be off the table. I want to know about the double in El Monte, and I want to know about the mob contracting shit out and who they’re leaning on. Got it?”
The gangster broke his eye contact again and said quietly, “Yeah, got it.”
Lopes stepped over and tapped his knuckles against the steel door twice. As he heard the keys rattling on the other side, he pointed at Spooky and said, “Spooky, take care . . . eh?”
Lopes stepped past Officer Lopez at the door and heard Spooky say, “Don’t forget my little girl and to put some jack on my books, eh?”
9
LOOKING OVER HIS shoulder, Leonard watched the closed front door of the house where the little girl had disappeared only a few moments earlier. He pictured her in a bedroom now, maybe changing out of her school clothes. He could see the skirt hit the carpeted floor, and he allowed his mind’s eye to wander upward, seeing the smooth brown skin of her young legs that were tight and toned but smooth. Then the thighs, soft and silky, maybe just a little damp from perspiration, maybe even a little sticky. He closed his eyes and drew a long, slow breath through his nostrils, his eyes now closed. He pictured her in white panties contrasting against her brown skin, her buttocks protruding slightly as she turned away from him in his mind. Leonard adjusted in his seat as he allowed himself to become aroused by his thoughts.
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