The Killing of the Saints

by Alex Abella

  She smiled, threw her purple boa over her shoulder. "I'm so glad I never paid you off. Even though I would have enjoyed the satisfaction of owning you, it's always terrible to pay thousands for what's only worth a nickel."

  "I know. Look at what your husband got. He died so you can play patsy with fruitcakes."

  "Nice meeting you again, Mr. Morell."

  "Yes, have a nice day."

  Down Hollywood Boulevard, on my way home, I saw the usual gallery of runaways, druggies, Hell's Angels and whores joined by impromptu Halloween revelers in Vampirella wigs, Freddie Krueger costumes and Ronald Reagan masks, all traipsing up and down the blockaded street, as overweight traffic cops with flashlights attempted to stop the nocturnal procession from degenerating into a riot.

  It wasn't the spirit of revelry that envelops New Orleans in Mardi Gras or San Francisco on Halloween itself, what I saw on that boulevard but a burgeoning cry for release, a shifting onto a public sphere of all the fears, desires and malfunctions of private life so that the street became an arena, a competition between contesting forces, not a means of expression but a way to power, to accumulation of display. Who would sport the sharpest getup, who's got the cherriest low rider, the most outlandish lingo, the most drugged-out state. Halloween in Los Angeles became yet another ring where the ambitions that rule the city presented themselves, only in their rawest form because so close to the source, so close to that throbbing desire to possess, to use, to accumulate, to despoil and abuse, the frenzied feeding of the material world by a society acting as though MENE MENE TEKEL were written on the wall instead of LST 19 or ROLLING BREAKS CONQUER or JESUS HATES SEX.

  I could smell traces of Lucinda's Giorgio perfume in the air when I came home. As usual, she had left the bathwater in the tub. I drained it, opened the windows.

  In her rush she'd left the bed undone and her discarded clothes in a mound on the floor-the aubergine skirt that was the wrong color, the chartreuse blouse that didn't feel right, the black stockings with a previously unnoticed run. I am living alone already, I told myself, what is the use in all of this?

  I left the house again and got in my car, driving aimlessly around, not knowing why or where, just pointing the wheels in whatever direction felt right until, by chance or inner compass, I found myself traveling down the easy slopes of Silver Lake. The air was warmer and grittier, the accumulated exhaust of cars and buses from Sunset and downtown gathering in grimy clouds around the reservoir.

  Some kind of perverted desire must have brought me to Juan Alfonso's house, perverse in that I was not even aware of what I was doing but was acting as though my life and sanity depended upon it. I noticed the lights were on in his house and parked some ways down the street. The moon was laced with clouds, with a few stars peeking through the smog. I pushed open the fence gate and climbed up to the porch, a sweet fragrance of freesias welcoming me into the house. I knocked on the door.

  "Anybody home?"

  No answer. I pushed the door open. The large TV set was gone, as were the couch, the chairs, the table, the leaded glass buffet with miniatures of tropical fruit, all gone except for a handful of folding chairs and a card table under a lonely light bulb dangling from the end of a wire.

  "Juan Alfonso? Are you home?"

  On the kitchen counter sat a box of takeout from PolIo Loco, the barbecued chicken breast half eaten, the containers of beans and yellow rice opened, a plastic fork stuck in each. I heard a thumping downstairs in the basement.

  "Juan Alfonso, stop playing!" I said in Spanish.

  No reply, or rather no voice answered, instead a quick rapping like that of a bongo drum broke the stillness in the house. The riff lasted a few seconds then halted abruptly and the house seemed to wait for my next move.

  My heart announced its presence; a faint trickle of perspiration ran down my shirt. At that moment I wished I was carrying my gun, not to kill anyone but just for the sheer feeling of security it afforded me.

  "Carlos, ven acá," said a voice from down below.

  Suddenly my fear turned into rage. You want me to come, do you? You want me to come to you? I grabbed an empty beer bottle from the trash. I'll show you, I'll beat your fucking brains out!

  I rushed down the shaky steps but with every step I felt as though I were entering a universe of viscosity, where every step was like a plunger through water, only this time I was rushing into the flow.

  A red light flooded the basement, the kind that photographers use to develop their film, and an almost overwhelming smell of jasmine hung in the room. As I stepped off the stairs, bottle in hand, I felt a cold wave hitting me in the chest and a cloud of yellow butterflies flew out of nowhere, breaking around me as I touched the ground. This is not happening, I thought, this is not life. I'm either hallucinating again or I'm finally dead, and if so, why is there no relief?

  I saw a semicircle of wooden chairs set where the altar had been during my last visit and seven different people sitting in these chairs. At first I saw only their feet, all black, all shoeless, and for a moment I couldn't figure out why I could not lift my eyes, and why my neck was bent forward as though in obeisance. With great effort, making an ultimate act of concentration, I lifted my face and saw that each of the people wore masks fashioned out of straw, cowrie shells and mud, African masks with tribal markings on their cheeks and fleshy African lips. The red light emanated from behind them, a red sun shining at their backs. They all spoke in one voice.

  "Carlos leave alone, Carlos leave alone!"

  I tried to speak but couldn't, my tongue was pressed to my palate, and the chanting became louder and louder, burying me in the folds of its persistence until I finally unstuck my tongue and shouted, "Leave who?"

  And at that moment the figure in white in the middle chair removed its mask and I saw my father and I saw myself and I saw Ramón, all of them all of us, smiling at him, smiling at me. I lifted my arm slowly and threw the bottle at the figure which smiled as the bottle struck it in the jaw. A loud great noise rent the room and a cloud of yellow smoke burst from the forehead of the figure as the bottle burst the face into shards of dried mud which clattered to the ground and I fell backward on the floor from the impact of the blow and everything turned a deep blue which eased into soothing black, into quiet, peaceful nothingness.

  A bright light was shining somewhere, a light that filled the world while a husky, sibilant language was spoken. Then the pain came in waves, a stinging sensation all over my body. I opened my eyes and found .myself in Juan Alfonso's basement still, staring into the liquid brown eyes of a scrawny man in a grimy undershirt.

  "Wake up, mister, wake up or we call police!"

  I lifted myself up on my elbows, shook my head. Another man, chubby, unshaven and olive skinned, stood behind the first one, hands on knees, peering intently at me.

  "You OK?" said the second man.

  I got up. "Yeah, I ... I guess so. Who are you?"

  "I'm Greg," said the fatter of the two, "this is Vartek. We own this house."

  "You all right?" Vartek asked. "We found you here this morning. Somebody mug you?"

  "No, I guess I slipped and fell. Where is Juan Alfonso?"

  "He sold us the house two months ago. We fix for resale."

  I staggered to the wall, leaned on it, catching my breath.

  "I see. Well, thank you." I took a deep breath then slowly moved away. I wobbled to the stairs, held on to the railing. The two Armenians conferred in rapid-fire conversation.

  "Hey, you, you no sue, no?" asked Vartek worriedly as I trudged up the stairs.

  "Don't worry, I no sue, no."

  The sun was shining bright when I walked out into the street. I looked at my watch. Nine-fifteen. I'd spent the entire night in that basement. Miraculously no one had busted the window of my

  944 or even run a key along its side. But someone had left a message, a card stuck under the windshield wiper.

  "If you think I have forgotten you . .. I haven't."

 
; Signed, "God."

  18

  a s Clay had so aptly predicted, Pimienta's story was a straight-line narrative with one purpose-to put Ramón in the chair when the cyanide tablet drops into the acid and the People's will billows out in a choking gas. The testimony lasted three days, covering their upbringing in Cuba, their meeting at the Peruvian Embassy, their voyage to our promised land, and their subsequent life of violence and crime.

  Pimienta's sincerity and contrition, his humbleness as he responded to Phyllis's incessant prodding, eyes fixed on the ground, thick lips barely muttering the answers that the interpreter would blare to the courtroom, all this added far more weight to the appearance of culpability than the actual substance of his confessions. In spite of his sorry-sinner pose, Pimienta claimed he did not know

  Ramón would kill anyone at the store. This presented a major legal obstacle since it deprived the prosecution of the usual element of malice aforethought necessary for the death penalty. Fearing that some softhearted juror would find Ramón not guilty in the first degree because he had no intentions of killing anyone beforehand, Phyllis handled Pimienta with the delicacy of a butcher hacking a rack of lamb.

  Dressed in flaming red-shoes, belt, Escada dress-she approached the stand with vivid determination.

  "Isn't it true, Mr. Pimienta, that on the morning in question, you and Mr. Valdez discussed the possibility that someone might be killed during your robbery of Schnitzer Jewelers?"

  "No, I didn't imagine that. We thought we might have to disarm the guard and maybe wound him, but we didn't have any intentions of killing anyone. We were just there to grab the jewels of the saint and go, teach them a lesson."

  "Oh, so you did contemplate the possibility someone might be hurt?"

  "Well, yes."

  "And you're absolutely certain that lesson you mentioned did not include taking the life of the manager for the humiliation he'd made you go through?"

  Pimienta finally looked up, catching the drift that if he didn't cooperate, his deal would be history.

  "I didn't imagine that's what Ramón meant."

  "What did you imagine?"

  "Well, he said he was going to teach them a lesson they'd never forget, that they'd never do this to a Cuban, to a Latin again. But I just thought he was talking about taking the jewels back, that's all."

  Clay sat in the audience, watching his client put on the performance. He seemed satisfied with the show.

  "Why a Latin? Do you have any idea what he meant?"

  Here Pimienta actually brightened, his face becoming animated with the interior light of a child who remembers his lessons well.

  "That, yes, of course. We talked about that a lot. All the time. It was his, his…" Here the interpreter faltered. She glanced up at the grid ceiling, as though expecting a cribbed answer from above. "His bête noire," she finally said, not quite certain if she'd found the right word. I was impressed by her vocabulary. Pimienta had actually said weak point, but bête noire was much closer to what I knew would be coming.

  "Please explain."

  Pimienta gestured broadly for the first time in three days.

  "Sure, it's easy. All you have to do is look around you. Hispanics in this town are treated very bad. You have practically everybody Latin and there's no Latin mayor, all the political power belongs to the Anglos. The Orientals and the Jews all own the banks and the movies and even the blacks, they have a mayor, but nothing ever gets done for them. They're still oppressed."

  "Tell the truth, brother," muttered Mrs. Gardner in the jury box.

  "Objection, Your Honor," said Phyllis, as a murmur of disapproval went through the courtroom.

  "You're objecting to your own witness, Counsel?" asked the judge.

  The interpreter did not tell Pimienta an objection meant he should stop so he continued his peroration and the interpreter continued translating as a clamor of protest rose from the audience.

  "He always said California is a conquered land and the Chicanos here have never learned how to stand up for themselves, they're always getting it up the ass, that's what he said."

  "The court will sustain its own objection and will admonish everyone in the room to be quiet or the room will be cleared," warned the judge.

  "What we need here is a revolution, he always said, somebody has to teach these guys you can't mess with Latins, that sooner or later they're going to have to pay the price and that they can't keep fucking us like this," continued the interpreter, who still hadn't told Pimienta to be still. Reynolds finally turned, his face the same shade of red as Phyllis's dress.

  "Mr. Pimienta, shut up!"

  Pimienta finally grew still.

  "I will not put up with any racist statements in my courtroom, no matter what the justification. Racism is not germane in this matter and will not be accepted."

  Ever smiling, Ramón raised his hand. "Objection, Your Honor. I believe his statement is necessary to explain the state of mind."

  "Mr. Valdez, I think we already have a pretty good idea of what your state of mind was. Overruled. The testimony will be stricken. The jury is admonished to disregard the witness's last statements from"-looking at his notepad-" 'his bête noire' to 'fucking us like this.'" He looked up. "Proceed, Counsel."

  Phyllis bit her lip, then hurried back to her side of the counsel table. She glanced at some papers, asked the investigating officer a whispered question, then sat down, folding her hands on the murder book.

  "No further questions."

  Reynolds wrote in his notepad and muttered, "Mr. Valdez."

  "Thank you, Your Honor."

  Ramón adjusted his glasses, consulted his notes, then ostentatiously set them aside.

  "José, did I ever tell you I wanted to kill someone?"

  Pimienta glanced down at the carpet again. "No, you just said there might be some trouble."

  "What did I tell you I wanted to do when we went to the Schnitzer store?"

  "You wanted to take back the jewels of the saint because they had been given to him."

  "What did I want to do with them?"

  "Put them back on the altar."

  "What altar?"

  "The altar of the saint, Oggún, our father and protector."

  "Do we both belong to the same religion?"

  "Yes, we do."

  "What is that?"

  "Santería. We are children of Oggún."

  Now I understood why Ramón had never mentioned that the jewels were a present from Schnitzer. How they were obtained was not material, the only thing that mattered was how José and

  Ramón viewed the jewels and that they intended to get them back. In one swift stroke Ramón had now eliminated the dangerous need to call Mrs. Schnitzer. Her testimony would only have put Ramón in even hotter water. Once on the witness stand, everything could have come out, including his lethal prayers on behalf of her husband.

  Phyllis sat up, as though ejected by a spring from her seat. "Objection, Your Honor, irrelevant. There was a ruling-"

  "I know what my ruling was but since your witness spontaneously brought up the question of religion, Mr. Valdez has a right to question him about this," said Reynolds.

  "I don't recall."

  "Counsel, you should pay closer attention." Reynolds read off the rectangular screen of his computer. "Mr. Pimienta said they were going to get the jewels of the saint during direct, said it again during cross. Objection overruled. Proceed, Mr. Valdez."

  "Thank you, Your Honor." The judge sighed and sank back into his leather chair.

  "Why did we have to get the jewels back, José?"

  Pimienta was forthright, looking straight at Valdez. "You know, because if we don't, the saint will be angry and who knows what the saint will do. Well, you know."

  "Yes, I know. But the good people of the jury don't. Why don't you tell them."

  Pimienta fingered his gold ring. "Oggún is a mighty god but he doesn't like people who laugh at him. If anybody take anything from his altar he gets upset
and then, watch out, because it's death on wheels."

  "Excuse me, Madam Interpreter?" asked Reynolds.

  "Your Honor, that is what the witness said. Actually, he said it would be death on a bicycle but on wheels is the closest English equivalent."

  "I see," replied the judge. "Proceed."

  "José, of your own eyes and experience, what have you seen the saint do?"

  "Of my own?" He paused, slightly nervous, scratching his forearm, where he'd tattooed an arrowhead cross, the Cuban prison symbol of the enforcer.

  "Yes, with your own eyes."

  "Well, I have seen him come in the meetings, take over a woman and make her eat dog excrement for having laughed at him. I have seen him make someone jump from a four-story window to the street, becoming paralytic for the rest of his life. I even saw him kill people in revenge. You don't mess around with Oggún."

  "I think I've heard enough of this. We are getting further and further away from the subject," said Reynolds. "I've allowed you to delve into this area, Mr. Valdez, but that's no excuse to present a defense by indirection through the mouth of the witness. Please move on to another area."

  "Just one last question in this area, Your Honor."

  Reynolds hesitated. "All right, but just one."

  ''José, have you ever known anyone to take jewels from Oggún and live?"

  "Never."

  Reynolds, obviously fed up with the questioning, glanced at the clock. "I see it's time for our noon break. We'll reconvene at two o'clock."