“Now I know you’re full of shit!”
“I bet I can!” Bobby continued, leaning forward. He was a good-looking kid, with collar-length blonde hair and blue eyes. Danny was a little bit jealous of him sometimes since all the foxy-looking girls always got the hots for him and Bobby barely knew they were around. Bobby didn’t really care about girls really; all he was into was skating and surfing. “In fact—hey, I just thought of something!”
“What?”
Bobby’s blue eyes danced with some devilish mischief. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “You know that big drainage ditch that crosses Crenshaw near your house?”
Danny frowned. “No.”
“You know! Heading toward Torrance, down Crenshaw, by the liquor store.”
“Oh yeah, that.” Danny nodded. The drainage ditch in question was part of the massive Los Angeles County sewer system’s aqueducts. Danny knew all about them from having watched the movie Them! ten million times.
“You know Jerry Valdez?”
Danny nodded. Jerry lived around the corner from him and was one of the hottest skaters Danny knew. Jerry was sixteen and had his driver’s license. A month or two back, he had driven them to a special skateboard spot Jerry claimed he had dibs on. “I’m taking you guys to this spot because I know I can trust you to keep it a secret,” Jerry said that day as he drove them in his red VW bus to Palos Verdes, a swanky section of the South Bay area of Los Angeles. The spot in question was an empty swimming pool in the backyard of a house in a upper-middle class neighborhood. Jerry was right; it was the perfect spot. Secluded, in a quiet, tree-lined street, the pool had been easy to get access to through an ivy fence that bordered the property. Since Jerry introduced them to it, they’d skated it half a dozen times or so. The last time they’d skated it, three weeks ago, Jerry brought a photographer with him who shot photos of their session. The photographer, a guy named Glenn Freeman, told them he was going to submit the photos to Skateboarder magazine. Danny was stoked when he heard this. It was their shot at notoriety.
“Jerry told me there’s a pipe in that sewer,” Bobby continued. “It’s in Torrance. Apparently you get to it by climbing the fence at Crenshaw and there’s a drop point that leads down to the sewer, which is the most risky part. You know — cops might see you.” Danny nodded, understanding only too well. In the past few weeks the vertical skating bug had bitten them, and when they weren’t at Skateopia, they were scouting for empty swimming pools to skate in wake of the drought that was ravaging Southern California, causing homeowners to drain them. He and Bobby had only managed to sneak over the fence of somebody's home once when they weren't home and skate their empty swimming pool for twenty minutes before the homeowners showed up. They were lucky they hadn’t been caught.
“Anyway, we could time it so that nobody sees us jump the fence,” Bobby continued excitedly. “Once we get to the bottom, we’ll be cool.”
“We’d probably be okay once we go under Crenshaw, as well,” Danny ventured.
“Yeah, that’s true,” Bobby nodded. “Plus, we wouldn’t have to walk through all the shit at the bottom and we’d only have to go about half a mile down. We could probably find another slope down there to scale down they put them every half mile or so along the aqueduct.”
“How big is this pipe?”
“Not as big as the one at the Upland skate park, but it’s supposedly big enough to skate. Wanna try it?”
That was a stupid-ass question. “Hell yeah! How about tomorrow?”
“Cool!”
With that important decision out of the way, they stowed their trash in the garbage can and went to the bathroom. When they were finished they met outside by the lone phone kiosk at the outskirts of the lobby/arcade area and put on their helmets. “You see Raul lately?” Bobby asked.
Danny frowned as he secured the strap of his helmet under his chin. Raul Valesquez was known around the neighborhood as a prime psycho in training—a real asshole. Danny didn’t know one kid in the immediate one mile area of where they lived who wasn’t terrified of him. He lived in a dilapidated bungalow on Arcturus Street, two blocks from his house, with his alcoholic mother and an older brother who was Danny’s age named Rudy, and another older brother who was around Jerry’s age that nobody ever saw. Danny liked Rudy, had known him since fourth grade when he’d moved to the area with his family. Rudy was the exact opposite of Raul, who seemed hell bent on causing trouble everywhere he went. “No,” Danny said, his voice low. “I haven’t. I’ve been doing my route early to avoid him.”
Five days ago Bobby had been hanging out with Danny, helping him collect for his paper route. Danny delivered the Gardena Valley News twice a week, Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings. He collected money from his customers once a month for their subscriptions—seventy-five cents. It had happened on a Monday afternoon, summer vacation had officially started three weeks before, and Bobby and Danny had been skating up to the various houses on Danny’s route, knocking on the doors and collecting the monthly fee, which Danny carried in a padded manila envelope. It was a sunny day, there was a mild breeze blowing off the ocean, and all was right in the world until Raul Valesquez and his friend, Louie McWiggin, sauntered into their path.
Danny and Bobby had been taken by surprise—they were right at the corner of Arcturus and Redondo Beach Boulevard when suddenly Raul and Louie were there. One minute Danny was skating, talking to Bobby, and the next Raul had stopped him, one hand gripping his skinny bicep. “Where the fuck you think you’re going?”
Danny’s heart plunged into his stomach. Raul stood before him, grinning stupidly. His long brown hair was dirty and tangled. He was wearing tattered blue jeans and a green and yellow shirt that looked stained. Louie was older by about two years, had dark brown hair and full red lips; he always looked like he’d just eaten strawberry candy or something. Both boys looked liked they’d just been smoking pot or sniffing paint or something. Probably the latter—Jerry Valdez smoked pot all the time and he was cool. Raul and Louie had been known to sniff paint though, and everybody knew they were raving assholes.
“We’re just going home!” Danny said quickly, his voice a high-pitched falsetto that seemed to say, I’m not doing anything! Honest, I’m not!
Bobby had been riding his skateboard down a driveway when Raul and Louie popped out from behind a bush, and now he rode out to middle of the street instinctively, the way a gazelle will make a beeline for higher ground at the first sight of a lion in the savannah. As nature dictated, the hunters had already picked out the weakest of the prey and they’d swooped down on Danny instantly. Louie made a grab for the padded manila envelope. “What’s in the bag, geek?”
“Nothing!” Danny made to pull the bag closer to him and coins jingled inside. He could feel his testicles shrivel into his body.
Raul had stepped up to him, his muddy brown eyes boring into his. Most of the time Danny saw him he never paid attention to those eyes, but this time he was so close to the other boy that he couldn’t help but notice them. They were dead, empty, as if nothing lived inside. Looking into them frightened Danny even more. “The fuck you doing riding that pussy-ass piece of shit skateboard through here, fuck face? You want to start shit?”
“No,” Danny whimpered. He wanted to run, wanted to cry, but was afraid to do either.
“What did you say? You say something to me?” Raul’s voice became rough. His fists were balled at his sides and his body was primed; he was pumping himself up to unleash the primal energy that dwelled within him.
“N-n-n-no!” Danny stammered. He made a weak attempt at bringing his left foot into position on his skateboard to make a fast getaway if he could. “I didn’t say anything!”
“I could kick your ass right now!” Raul threatened, leaning into Danny’s face. “I could kick your ass and then go to your house and fuck your little sister till she bleeds out her ass, then wait till your mother comes home and do the same to her. What do you think about that?”
“It’s cool man,” Danny stammered, his mouth dry. His heart was hammering wildly and he wasn’t even aware of what he was saying. “Everything’s cool.”
Louie was standing in the foreground, grinning stupidly, his wispy hair blowing around his forehead as Raul lightly shoved Danny, pushing at his chest. “You want me to do it? Fuck with me, I’ll fuck you up, you fucking piece of shit!”
Danny was seeing double and it wasn’t until after he and Bobby finally left for home that he realized it was because tears were clouding his vision. He’d blinked his eyes, too scared to respond, and that was when he heard Louie say, “Fuck man, it’s the cops!”
A black and white squad car pulled up and the paralysis that had taken such a strong hold of Danny was suddenly gone and he was skating toward the police car, which had stopped in the middle of the street. For a moment he hadn’t known what to say; Bobby was still standing across the street, on the concrete island that bordered Redondo Beach Boulevard and the neighborhood, and he was dimly aware of Raul and Louie walking away. There had been two cops in the car and one of them was gesturing at Bobby, who approached the driver’s side. The cop in the passenger side had asked Danny if he was okay and Danny bit the bullet, held back the tears, and nodded his head.
“Those guys back there bothering you?” the cop asked.
Danny had just been about to say that, yes, those guys had been bothering him, when he very clearly heard Bobby Whitsett ask the other cop if it was true that an eight-year-old boy had been found dead in Alondra park the week before. That snapped everything into perspective for Danny and he’d clammed up, telling the other cop that those other kids hadn’t been bothering him. Then he’d listened as both cops told them that, yes, a dead boy had been found in the park and that they should talk to their parents about it if they had concerns. Bobby had said that he was wondering about the story because now he was scared to go into the park, and the officers assured them the park was fine – maybe it wasn’t safe to go in there at night, but it was perfectly safe in the daytime. Then the cops told the boys to be careful and drove on.
Leaving Bobby Whitsett and Danny Hernandez alone.
Bobby later told Danny he’d flagged the cop down the minute he saw the squad car coming toward them down Redondo Beach Boulevard, hoping its very presence would send Louie and Raul scurrying away like rats fleeing from a cat. Danny had been relieved, glad he’d escaped a beating. Raul’s reputation as a trouble-maker was notorious in the neighborhood. It was rumored he had beaten up a kid from Torrance so badly that the kid lost an eyeball and all his teeth and had to have some thing stuck up his dick so he could pee. That was easy for Danny to believe. When he was in sixth grade at One Hundred and Fifty-Sixth Street School, he’d seen how violent Raul was during a fight after school. Raul had kept hitting his opponent’s face even as the kid was on the ground crying, and it had taken six other boys and Mr. Ellis, his fifth grade teacher, to pull him off.
Now in the safety of the skateboard park, that brief moment of terror came flooding back. Danny had been doing everything he could to avoid Raul in the week since their run-in and so far he’d been lucky. Thankfully, Raul spent most of his time at Louie’s house, sniffing paint and doing God knew what else.
“You can’t avoid him forever, you know,” Bobby said.
Danny sighed. “I know. He’s just so damn unpredictable.”
Bobby nodded. “You got that right.” It was true; one minute Raul would ignore you, the next he could be okay, five minutes later he’d want to rip your face off for no reason.
“I really hate that fucker,” Danny muttered.
“So do I.”
“Don’t your parents know Raul’s mom?”
Bobby shuddered. “Shit, man, just because Dad taught catechism last year doesn’t mean they’re, like, buddies with the Valesquez family.”
Danny nodded. Last year, Bobby’s dad, James Whitsett, got it into his mind that the family should attend the local Catholic Church more often. For eight months the entire family, which included Bobby and his older sister, Katie (who was a stone fox), attended Sunday morning Mass at St. Mark’s Catholic Church. Bobby’s dad volunteered to teach catechism and wound up teaching the class Bobby and Danny were in. Rudy was in that class as well, and on parent-teacher night Rudy’s mom had come in with her latest male escort, some hulking hairy thing who smelled like alcohol. Bobby’s dad had been pretty nice to her, though, and never once looked at her in disgust or treated her rudely the way some of the other parents had that night. In the weeks that followed until Catechism was over, Danny sometimes saw Bobby’s father talking with Mrs. Valesquez as she stopped by to pick up her son. His comment, while made in jest, was intended to elicit some kind of insider information. Maybe Bobby’s dad mentioned something in passing about what it was like in their house.
“Yeah, well, I thought maybe he knew a little more about them,” Danny admitted. “You know ... something to give us a little insight on why Raul is such a shit.”
“He’s never said anything to me,” Bobby said, strapping his helmet on. “But then he doesn’t talk much about the other parents or the other kids, either.”
“Is Raul going to be in his class soon?”
“Who knows? It’s not like church is going to save him. Raul would need, like, a hundred exorcisms to cure him.”
Danny laughed. He was leaning against the phone kiosk and now he turned to it, eyes riveted on something, and then he smiled. He reached inside and plucked a worn pencil resting on top of the pay phone. He grinned at Bobby, then reached inside and quickly scribbled something on the interior wall of the kiosk, stepped back and chuckled. Bobby leaned forward and laughed at what Danny had written on the phone kiosk’s wall in prominent block letters amid the scratches of similar graffiti.
For a good time call Raul: 213-532-4811.
Bobby covered his hand with his mouth. “Holy shit, that’s his real number, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is.”
The two boys looked at each other, than burst out laughing. That simple act of defacing public property seemed to lift Danny’s spirits for the day, and he finished the rest of his session at the skate park doing amazing lip slides at the top of the bowl, then topped that with an amazing run in the half-pipe, at one point astonishing even himself by getting three wheels out frontside!
DANNY SAT IN front of the computer, the memory of that day running through his mind, and he found himself crying in his drunkenness. Reliving that day had been a confirmation that his innocence was ending. Putting himself back in the mind of that thirteen-year-old boy, seeing the world through his eyes, knowing what he knew now about the world ... it ached his heart to know of the evils that existed and he wished he could go back in time to warn his younger self of what was to come. If he could only do that, things wouldn’t be so fucked up now. If he could only be allowed to go back in time and fix things, maybe he wouldn’t be the fuck-up he had become.
Maybe things would have turned out better.
Maybe his mother would be proud of him instead of clucking in disapproval at him and his failings. Perhaps his sister would look at him in a better light...
He still loved his mother and his younger sister, Tina, very much.
Danny hitched in a sob and stood up suddenly, weaving drunkenly. The memories had opened up a well in him that couldn’t be shut completely. That door was now open and other images and fragments from memories long buried were threatening to overwhelm him. He wiped his eyes, crying. “Jesus Christ, man, what happened to me? What the fuck happened?”
It was a question he often asked himself on nights like this when he drank. And it was one he’d been asking recently. In the 1980’s and most of the ‘90’s when he’d been in an alcohol and drug-induced fog, he never thought to ask such questions, but now he was doing so regularly. Doing so was sending him back into drinking in an attempt to stem the questions, but it wasn’t helping. Drinking only enhanced them, made them flow faster.
“What the fuck happened?”
As usual, he fell asleep with this question on his mind.
Three
THE ROOM THAT the task-force was meeting in at the Gardena Police Department’s Headquarters was filled to capacity. Detective Tom Jensen was seated in the far right corner, his legal pad open, taking notes as the Chief of Homicide and lead investigator in the Valesquez murder, Detective Gary Little, read from a report filed by two members of the task-force regarding their conversations with Robert Valesquez, older brother of the victim. So far it was proving to be pretty interesting.
“So let’s summarize where we are now,” Detective Little said, pacing the front of the room before the assembled throng of detectives. Gary Little was a slim, youthful-looking man in his mid-forties. Despite his baby-face appearance, he had the exterior of a bulldog. He’d once taken two bullets in the chest during a sting operation in Watts and, despite the severity of his wounds, managed to not only care for his wounded partner, but he took down his attempted murderer with one well-placed shot which, in turn, saved the lives of his fellow officers who had been forced to hunker down for cover amidst the gunfire. Now Gary was one of the top homicide detectives in the division.
In addition to the detectives, a representative from the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office was present as well; he was sitting in the front row, dressed in a tan business suit. On the whiteboard at the front of the room was a series of key dates relating to the case, as well as several names of witnesses with corresponding names of detectives whom they were assigned to. Detective Jensen’s name was lined up with several of these names, including his old school pal, Danny Hernandez. He’d been able to locate and speak to all of the people on his list except for one: Jerry Valdez.
“Doug Archer is currently free, but we have him on surveillance pending the outcome of our investigation," Detective Little continued. "Patty Huber was able to locate evidence in storage in which we’ve been able to extract materials for DNA testing. Those results have proven to be inconclusive so far, yet based on the Archer defense team, who helped petition the re-opening of the case, the scant DNA we were able to find on the body and clothing of the victim do not match that of Mr. Archer. Thanks to this DNA test, Mr. Archer is now free, although we don’t know for how much longer.” Detective Little glanced at the representative from the DA’s office, who was an officious little man in a burgundy suit and a shiny bald head. “It seems that due to our recent investigation, one of our detectives uncovered something I think you all need to hear. Pressman?” Detective Little nodded toward a tall, thin man seated among the throng of detectives.
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