Danny nodded. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “We can talk to him. I know we can.”
“Just stay there!” Jerry admonished, stepping away from the car. “I’ll be right back.”
Jerry Valdez wasn’t gone very long—two minutes at the most—but it felt like two hours to Danny.
All he could do was watch Raul’s unconscious form beneath the wet suit, his skateboard gripped tightly in his hands, nerves tense, almost expecting Raul to jump out at him like some boogeyman.
He practically jumped out of his skin when Jerry returned from the automotive store and threw something in the front seat. “Hold tight,” he said as he started the car. He pulled out of the parking slot and drove around to the back of the store and parked, leaving the engine running. He grabbed the package, got out, and ran around to the passenger side door and opened it carefully. Danny looked outside, noting that they were in an unobservable position—the rear of the automotive store was nothing more than a narrow alley bordering against the brick wall of somebody’s back yard. A lone garbage dumpster sat against the rear of the store, stained with graffiti.
Jerry quickly trussed Raul up with the duct tape. He bound his wrists behind his back, than tossed the roll to Danny. “Wrap it around his ankles.”
Danny didn’t want to tie Raul up but he couldn’t disobey Jerry. Part of him wanted to just leave now and skate home—he didn’t care if Jerry called him a pussy or if the police eventually came knocking on his door and wanted to know why he’d been a party to Raul’s abduction and assault. He didn’t care about any of that. He just wanted to go home. He wanted his mother to come home and make it all better.
He started crying as he bound Raul’s ankles tightly together with the duct tape.
“Hey,” Jerry said, his voice taking on a soft edge. He still looked nervous. “Hey, Danny...it’s gonna be okay.”
Danny nodded, trying to stop crying. He tore the duct tape off and handed it back to Jerry, who took it and tore a final strip off. He placed this strip firmly over Raul’s mouth and pressed it down.
Then he laid Raul’s head down carefully on the seat, closed the door, and got back into the van.
“Where are we going?” Danny said, wiping the tears from his eyes. His throat hurt and his stomach was queasy, threatening to upheave his lunch.
“I don’t know,” Jerry said as he pulled out onto Prairie Avenue, making a left hand turn, heading to Torrance. “Far away.”
And as they headed into Torrance, Danny remained glued to his side of the seat, his mind numb, wondering how he got into this mess and hoping he would get out of it without his mother finding out.
“ALL WE...ALL we wanted to do was...get him somewhere so we could...so he wouldn’t be so...” Jerry said, shaking his head, looking far older than the forty-something man he was now—far older than the teenage boy he was when he drove an unconscious kid to his death in the backseat of his car. “That’s all we wanted to do...get him out of his environment...get him calmed down...talk to him...”
Tom was listening in rapt silence, not interrupting as Danny spun the narrative, interrupted only a few times by Jerry to clarify something or chime in with his perspective on how things went down that day. Danny felt sick; talking about it after all these years was making him nauseous. It was the first time he’d talked about it with anybody in over twenty-eight years.
“You were really afraid of him, weren’t you?” Tom asked.
Jerry nodded, bowing his head. Tears pooled at the corner of his eyes. “That day...and the days leading up to it...were the scariest of my life.” His voice cracked. “I was...I was scared of...what he might do to...ma-m-my sister and my parents!”
Danny took a deep breath, feeling a tremendous weight being taken off his shoulders. Hearing his own fears being verbalized like this out in the open in front of a third party who hadn’t been there that day was strangely therapeutic. It was like a deep cleansing, a baring of his soul. Hearing Jerry say that he had been that deeply afraid affirmed his own feelings after all these years.
Tom looked at Danny. “And you were just as scared?”
Danny nodded, looking at Tom. “Yeah. I was.”
Tom turned to Jerry. “What did you think would happen if you had just called the police? What if you had done what Danny originally wanted to do...just dump Raul off at his house and call the cops?”
“They wouldn’t have done anything,” Jerry said, weeping softly and wiping his eyes. He looked at Tom. “They just would have...I don’t know...not done anything.”
“And Raul would have been back again,” Tom said.
Danny and Jerry nodded.
“You mentioned you were parked up the street from Raul’s house, watching it,” Tom asked. “Why?”
Jerry wiped his eyes. “I don’t know. I was...scared...and I was thinking a lot about what to do and I just...didn’t know what to do! I knew shit was happening at that place. I’d been inside before to cop weed and...I don’t know, man, the few times I was inside that house I always caught a bad vibe. I can’t explain it.” He looked at Tom. “I knew dope was being sold out of the house but I didn’t know what else. I...I felt more shit was happening, but I didn’t know what it was.”
Tom nodded. “So you didn’t know the full extent of it back then?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“And then it all made sense when you learned from James Whitsett what really happened in that house.”
Jerry nodded and looked at Tom. “Yeah. And...when I realized what else was going on...it made me sick.”
“But at the time this all happened, you didn’t have a clue,” Tom continued. “You were just a scared kid. You wanted to do the right thing...but you knew that if you called the police, they wouldn’t take you seriously.”
Jerry nodded and bowed his head. He leaned forward, elbows on the knees of his ratted blue jeans. “I thought about calling the FBI. I was actually considering that but...I didn’t know if even that was the right thing to do. I didn’t know much about...law enforcement or how that shit worked back then. I mean, shit, I was only sixteen years old at the time! What the fuck was I supposed to do?”
“So you were trying to think of what to do?” Tom asked, gently prodding Jerry on. “Or you were just sitting there in your VW, watching the place, trying to get a handle on what happened?”
“All of the above,” Jerry said, sighing. “I was there maybe an hour when Danny rode by. He didn’t see me, he just kept on going. Another five minutes went by and Danny rode by my side of the street and then I saw the front door to the Valesquez home open and Raul came running out.” He paused. “And I started the bus and pulled away from the curb and started driving toward him. I don’t know why...I guess at the time I just wanted to drive by him, maybe circle around the block and catch up to him, try to get him to talk but...it happened so damn fast!”
“And what happened afterwards just fell into place,” Tom said. “Didn’t it?”
Jerry glanced at Danny, then turned back to Tom and nodded. “Yeah. It did.”
“So what happened next?”
AUGUST 27, 1977 5:04 pm
By the time they reached the neighborhood that the Fruit Bowl was in, Raul had regained consciousness.
And he was pissed off.
Danny remained positioned behind the driver’s seat, skateboard held up like a shield against his body. Raul had moved himself up to a sitting position and at one point started flailing around in an attempt to free himself. When Jerry yelled at Danny to knock Raul down, Danny reacted instinctively by swinging the skateboard at Raul’s head, knocking him against the back of the bus. The blow didn’t knock Raul out, but it dazed him. He lay slumped against the seat and the door, muttering through the duct-taped gag, blood running down his left cheek and nose.
Danny’s heart was racing frantically. “We have to do something!”
“Hang on, we’re almost there,” Jerry said. He was sitting forward over the steering wheel bea
ring a look of mad intent.
Danny saw they were approaching Palos Verdes, in an upper-middle class section of Torrance. In fact they were only five blocks away from—
“We’re taking him to the Fruit Bowl?” Danny asked. His nerves felt like ice.
“Yeah.”
“How come?”
“Because it’s in a quiet neighborhood and nobody’ll be home.”
Danny paused, his mind racing. “What are we going to do there?”
“I don’t know yet,” Jerry answered, his voice shaky. “Try to talk some sense into him.”
“But...” Danny didn’t know what to say. Jerry was right; the Fruit Bowl was in a very quiet neighborhood, it was a secret skateboard spot nobody knew about except Jerry and Danny and the photographer they’d brought a few months ago. Last time they were there, they'd had two uninterrupted hours of time to skate. Not once did a nosy neighbor call the police.
Jerry pulled into the neighborhood and cruised it slowly. Danny watched the houses as they passed by. With the exception of some little kids playing in the driveway of a large house, and an older man watering his yard, the neighborhood was deserted.
Jerry made a right hand turn down the street the Fruit Bowl was on and quickly pulled to the curb. The ivy fence that bordered the house loomed large, like some fortress guarding a vast estate. Jerry pulled the keys out of the ignition and turned around. “I’m gonna open the passenger side door and pull him out by the shoulders. You follow his feet out and help me carry him through the fence.”
Danny didn’t say anything. Jerry was out of the car and at the passenger side in a flash, dragging Raul out of the car. Danny scampered out, leaving his skateboard in the car. He closed the door and helped support Raul. A quick glance at the neighborhood indicated the coast was clear, and then they were across the sidewalk, diving through the ivy fencing and then they were in the backyard of the house, the swimming pool laid out before them like an empty mouth.
Raul was starting to come out of his daze, and by the time they reached the side of the pool, his eyes were darting around, narrowing to slits of anger. Jerry led him down the steps into the shallow end and motioned for Danny to follow. “Come on,” he said to Raul. “Quiet down, we just want to talk to you.”
“Mmmphh!” Raul yelled through the gag. He started to struggle again and Jerry had to fight to control him. His eyes locked with Danny’s. “Help me!” Jerry hissed.
Danny took a tentative step forward. Raul bent over at the waist in an attempt to throw Jerry off his balance. It almost worked. Jerry struggled against the smaller boy and kneed him in the stomach. Raul went down on his knees, his long hair falling in his face. Jerry quickly scrambled to his feet and shot Danny a poisonous glance. “Fucking help me out, man!”
Danny warily approached Raul. This was insane; no way was Raul going to calm down enough to listen to them, and there was no way he was going to agree to turn himself in to the authorities. He wanted to tell Jerry to just drop everything. Let’s just leave him here, dump him and get the hell out of here, this isn’t going to work, it isn’t—
Jerry pulled Raul toward the deep end of the pool. The bottom was filled with a puddle of water, roughly four inches or so deep. It hadn’t been there a month ago when Jerry had driven himself and Bobby to the pool and they’d skated it the last time. Maybe the owners wised up to the fact that kids were sneaking into their backyard to skate their pool and taken the necessary steps to dissuade them.
Raul continued to struggle, his yells become louder. Jerry held him down. “Listen, just calm down, man. We aren’t going to hurt you, we just want to—”
“Mmmmphhh! Nnnnnnmmmmmaaaaaaffffffaaaaaaaa!” Raul’s eyes were blazing pits of evil; sweat dotted his skin; his face was red with anger and exertion. Danny’s heart stopped. If they released him now he would kill them both, no question.
Jerry forced Raul to his knees. The younger boy continued to struggle and Jerry leaned close to him. Danny was helping Jerry hold Raul down and he’d never felt so frightened in his life. Handling Raul was like trying to keep a crazed, rabid dog behind a chain-link fence. “Calm. The fuck. Down!” Jerry said, his voice menacing, eyes locked with Raul’s. “You want to get tough with me? You started this shit by sneaking to my house and watching my sister through her bedroom window, you little shit!”
Raul stopped screaming through his gag. His eyes fixed on Jerry’s. The cords on his neck bunched out. “Mmmmaaaaaphama phck eeerrrr!”
“What?” Jerry leaned closer to Raul. “I didn’t hear you. Calm down and speak softer so I can understand you.”
“Mmmaaaphama phck eeerrrr!”
With a sudden ripping sound, Jerry Valdez tore the duct tape gag from Raul’s face. Raul yelled briefly and Danny started, his heart leaping in his chest. Jerry leered in front of Raul, holding the strip of duct tape. “Okay, gag’s off. Say that again.”
Raul looked at Jerry, then at Danny. When those muddy eyes settled on Danny he felt his blood turn to ice. “I said I’m gonna fuck your sister,” he said to Jerry. “Then I’m gonna cut her eyeballs out and stuff em up her ass, then I’m gonna kill you and your whole fucking family.” He turned to Danny. “And when I’m done at his house, I’m going to yours and do the same thing, only I’m going to tie you up the way you guys tied me up and let you watch as I fuck your mom and your sister!“
Danny slapped Raul. Hard. The anger exploded out of him so suddenly, so ferociously, that he could only act on it. “Shut up!” he hissed, feeling his fear give way now to blinding rage and a sense of duty. “Shut the fuck up, goddamnit!”
Raul looked at Danny, his right cheek redder now from the sudden blow. Then he tilted his head back and laughed.
Danny and Jerry stood at the bottom of the empty swimming pool, Raul Valesquez on his knees before them as he brayed laughter. Danny could feel the tension mounting. He knew if Raul freed himself he could overcome both of them easily and he would not hesitate to kill them on the spot. He also knew that any attempt to contact the authorities would only result in their own arrest and trip to juvenile hall. There was no way an adult would take anything he and Jerry would have to say seriously. Even if they did poke around, Danny was sure Raul would go unpunished as he always did. And in the meantime, his and Jerry’s families would be in danger.
Raul laughed. “You might as well leave me here now, fuck-heads, because when I get free I’m going straight to your homes—”
Jerry lashed out with a sudden, violent kick that landed with a muffled woof in Raul’s stomach. Raul doubled over, the wind knocked out of him. The suddenness of the violence surprised Danny momentarily, but he didn’t do anything to stop it. He could only watch as Jerry followed it up with a blow to Raul’s face, which knocked him back into the shallow water of the pool.
Jerry was on Raul in an instant, pummeling him with blows, and that snapped Danny out of his temporary paralysis. He leaped on Jerry and tried to pull him off. “No, come on, man, this isn’t the right way!”
“Motherfucker!” Jerry said. He hit Raul in the face a second time, breaking his nose.
“Jerry!” Danny yelled. He grabbed Jerry’s arm and tried to pull him back.
The blows Jerry delivered to Raul’s face didn’t faze him. He was still laughing with a maniacal glee. His eyes blazed with a mad insanity. They locked on Danny. His face was bloody, already starting to swell. “I’m gonna fuck your mother so hard she’s gonna bleed out her mouth!”
“Shut up!” Jerry shouted, hitting Raul again.
Raul laughed, flailing in the shallow water.
Danny kept trying to pull Jerry away and he finally succeeded in getting a firm hold around the older boy’s waist. He pulled him back. They settled back on the downward slope of the pool, catching their breath. Raul settled himself up, his clothes and hair wet, face streaked with blood, grinning. “I’m gonna get free!” he sang.
“Fuck you!” Jerry snarled.
Raul kept grinning, moving his arms beh
ind his back. “You scraped my arms up pretty good, but you also scraped up the duct tape. I’m halfway free now.” Danny saw with mounting horror that the younger boy was right. Raul now had more momentum in his movements. Danny felt his stomach plunge down an elevator shaft as Raul grinned at them. “When I get out of this shit I’m gonna fuck you up. Get ready for the fucking morgue, assholes.”
Jerry stood up and Danny got to his feet, his heart racing. There was a sense of calm purpose in Jerry’s demeanor now, like he suddenly had better control of himself. “I don’t think so,” Jerry said.
Raul moved his arms behind his back and Danny saw he was gaining more momentum in his motions. “Give me a few more minutes and my arms will be free, then I’m untying my legs. You might as well get going now because you don’t want to deal with me—”
Jerry moved so quickly that Danny barely saw it coming. The older boy reached down and pushed Raul back into the water again, then quickly grabbed his duct-taped ankles. He pulled back, grimacing as Raul flailed, sputtering. The younger boy’s body rolled over and then flopped on its stomach. Jerry hoisted Raul up by his ankles again, and this time the younger boy began to struggle wildly like a fish flopping out of water. Danny watched, feeling a numbed sense of detachment.
Danny couldn’t stop it.
With his arms still lashed behind his back, Raul couldn’t push his face out of the water. He was head first in the shallow water of the swimming pool, his face totally submerged as Jerry held his body up by the ankles. Raul struggled, his body thrumming and vibrating in his mad attempt to free himself but Jerry held on, holding him steady. It seemed to go on forever for Danny. All he could do was just stand there and watch, thinking, I can’t believe I’m seeing this.
And then Jerry lost his grip on Raul’s ankles and they flopped to the ground. Raul shouted, bubbles bursting to the surface in the shallow puddle at the bottom of the pool. Jerry leaped on the younger boy’s back, pinning him down as Raul continued to struggle to throw the older boy off him.
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