You’re master of understatement, Boone. Looking 4ward 2 Sat nite.
C u tomorrow.
Well, that 2.
As Boone drove toward the Northwest Side, he felt a tingling from the back of his legs to the top of his head. He found that encouraging, needing the edge. He had been an officer long enough to have faced nearly every danger one could imagine. But this was beyond anything almost any Chicago cop had encountered. Gangbangers in the city had progressed far beyond the days of rumbles and vandalism and petty crimes.
Local gangs had gone national and become bigger and more widespread than even the Chicago Outfit, controlling heroin, cocaine, PCP, marijuana, and weapons trafficking. Murder, extortion, protection rackets, and every form of underworld activity could be laid at their feet. While the Outfit still intimidated businesses and was heavily involved in racketeering, embezzlement, and hijacking truck and ship cargo while also infiltrating the trade unions, not even they were feared like the violent street gangs. The gangs were as heavily armed as any military, never ratted on each other, threatened any adversary, and seemed to have zero respect for human life, their own included.
In this instance, Boone and his superiors were counting on the veracity of one prison chaplain. There was the very real possibility that this whole thing was a setup. Boone didn’t think Pascual Candelario would personally expose himself to the danger of the Chicago Police Department swooping down on him if his aim was some sort of attack. But who knew if the whole idea of this meeting with one of the top gang kings in the country was just a way to get a decorated officer in the wrong place at the wrong time?
It was not beyond the DiLoKi Brotherhood to make such a statement. Boone imagined the headlines in the Tribune the next day. “Officer Slain in Street Gang Ambush.”
Even in the darkness of the wee hours of a December morning, Boone—his senses fear-heightened—could make out the change in the tapestry of graffiti that blanketed the community. For years the Northwest Side had been the bailiwick of the ALKQN (the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation). Its initials and symbols had long dominated the region.
But with Pascual Candelario’s release and the advent of the brilliant idea he had formed while at Stateville, turf wars had virtually ended. Blacks, whites, Crips, Bloods, People, Folks, P. Stoners, Vice Lords, Gangster Disciples, you name it—all were welcome under the banner of the DiLoKi Brotherhood. Boone had not seen anyone but Hispanics in this neighborhood for years, but now, even during the witching hours, he saw a rainbow of races.
Their colors, tats, hats, do-rags, and gang signs had one thing in common: DiLoKi. Even the streetwalkers, trying desperately to look sexy while bundled against the cold, were apparently sponsored by and protected by DiLoKi pimps and muscle. Street corner pushers brazenly flashed packets of dope and signaled prices, while at the same time clearly on the lookout for marked or unmarked squad cars.
A pure white bread like Boone in a Buick would have created a firestorm of attention in this neighborhood not so many years before. But while Boone drew curious stares, he heard no shouts, no threats, saw no automatic weapons brandished. In the past, someone having made the wrong turn or taken the wrong exit off the expressway would have had about sixty seconds to find their way out of the neighborhood. Otherwise, he and everything he owned was fair game to the Latin Kings.
Boone rolled to the stop sign in question. He’d hoped the streets would be deserted, but with no cross traffic, stopping for more than an instant drew immediate attention. A streetwalker approached from one side, a pusher from the other.
Boone tried to wave them off, but while the girl turned on her five-inch heel to look for other fare, the pusher reached into his waistband. Boone slid his hand down to his ankle holster, knowing he would be better off just speeding out of there.
But suddenly the pusher held up both hands, palms out, looking terrified. “PC!” he said. “My brotha!”
“I ain’t your brotha,” Pascual Candelario said as he opened the passenger door. He called the pusher a vile name and told him to disappear as he slid into the car. The man ran off, but the hookers began squealing and waving and even the pimps got out of their cars to salute the king.
“Let’s get out of here, amigo,” PC said. “Up three blocks and right four.”
Boone stole a glance at the mountain that had invaded the car. Pascual was so huge that the LeSabre seemed to drift to the right. The man was wearing sneakers, socks to just below his knees, basketball shorts, and an oversize jersey under an unzipped coat. Boone was tempted to ask how he kept his legs warm, but for now he was just doing what he was told.
The area Candelario had directed him to was deserted, the buildings boarded up. He pulled to the curb and sat idling outside a chain-link fence that enclosed a vacant lot.
“You carrying?” PC said.
“’Course, what do you think? I’m on duty.”
“What you got, man?”
“An ankle toy.”
Candelario laughed. “A .22, right? Tell me I’m right. Am I right?”
“You’re right.”
The big man hooted and leaned over, almost smothering Boone. He reached down and found the weapon, pulling it up and examining it in the light of a streetlamp. “I don’t think this would even pierce a man my size, do you?”
Boone smiled weakly. “Maybe not.”
“You wanna see what I’m carrying?”
“I’m afraid to ask. I felt it when you leaned over me.”
The DiLoKi king reached into his coat and produced a sawed-off shotgun. Only a man that big could conceal such a weapon. It was nearly three feet long.
“Is that what I think it is?” Boone said, accepting his own weapon back and breathing a sigh of relief. He holstered the .22, which looked even more like a toy now.
Pascual was still chuckling. “I don’t know, man. What do you think it is? How well do you know your straps?”
“Looks like an Ithaca. Is it? A 37 Stakeout?”
“Bueno, hombre. With a pistol grip.”
“Nice.”
Before Boone could even think about reaching for his .22 again, Candelario pressed the barrel of the Ithaca to his temple. “Look straight ahead, man.”
So was this it? Over before it began? Boone fought to regulate his breathing. Pascual Candelario had to know Boone wasn’t alone. Did he have his own people nearby and a way to escape after executing a police officer?
No, this had to be a test, and Boone was determined to pass it.
“Scared, man?”
“You hold all the cards, Pascual.”
“You just meet me and you call me by my first name?”
“We haven’t even been introduced,” Boone said. “But we’re going to be working together, so . . .”
“So you thought you’d be familiar.”
“I’ll call you whatever you want. But you can feel free to call me Boone.”
“You’re a brave man, Boone. Come in here, knowin’ who you’re talking to.”
Boone shrugged. “I believed what I was told about you. If it’s true, it’s true; if it’s not, it’s not.”
PC pulled the weapon away and laid it across his lap. “It’s true. Sorry I had to do that, but you know. . . .”
“I know,” Boone said. Then he snatched the .22 and pressed it against Pascual’s bald head. “Don’t move. This feel like a toy to you now? You realize that Ithaca in your lap is all the justification I need, right? Felon in possession of a deadly weapon? I wouldn’t be off the job longer than two days. And I’d be celebrated.”
The big man wasn’t moving, but Boone didn’t detect fear either. Finally PC started to chuckle. “Okay, amigo, okay. Now we both know neither of us is afraid to die. I know your story, and you know some of mine. We work together, we’re gonna have to trust each other. Put the cap gun away and shake my hand.”
“How ’bout we also put the Ithaca in the backseat?”
Boone holstered the .22 and Pascual tossed the shot
gun in the back.
“So we stared each other down,” Candelario said. “We good to go now?”
“I am.”
“Take me somewhere safe where we can talk.”
“Where would you be safe, PC? You’re not exactly a man I can hide.”
Candelario glared at Boone. “That was part of the deal. You were supposed to have a place picked out.”
“Calm down. I do.”
Boone drove six miles north to an industrial park where security had been temporarily replaced by the Chicago PD and the local district squads had been instructed to keep their distance. He pulled in behind a metal fabrication plant that produced wire, staples, and nails. It had recently moved from three shifts to two and was closed until eight in the morning.
“Now I got to trust you,” Candelario said as they emerged from the Buick and headed to the back door.
“We’ve got to get to know one another, PC,” Boone said, producing the key. “You hungry?”
“Do I look hungry? Man, I stay ahead of hunger.”
Under the light over the back door, Boone got his first good look at the man. With his huge frame and tattooed neck, Pascual was a walking nightmare. “You are one scary dude.”
“I hope so,” Candelario said. “The whole package has to work, and it always has.”
They entered a combination break room/locker room, and Boone dug a Coke out of the refrigerator. “They’ve got whatever you want, PC. What’ll it be?”
“Mountain Dew? Got to have my caffeine, man.”
Boone tossed him one.
PC shed his coat and slowly sat, his massive body spilling over both sides of a plastic chair. Boone sat across from him and rested his elbows on the table. “I’ve actually been looking forward to this, Pascual,” he said. “I can call you Pascual, right?”
“Yeah, man, that back there was just posturing, you know. I had to see if I could make you wet your pants. I should have known better. They weren’t gonna put a child on this assignment. Now, listen, my people know better than to question me, but they’re gonna be suspicious if I’m gone too long. I got a plan and I know you got questions, so let’s get to this.”
Boone said, “I think we both have an idea where we want to go, but I want to hear your story, know how you got to this point, hear what you’re about.”
Candelario sighed and stared at the ceiling. “Some of it I like talking about. Some of it I don’t.”
“I want to hear it all.”
“Okay. But then let’s get down to business.”
18
The Rendezvous
For the next FEW HOURS, Pascual Candelario told Boone a sad but typical story of a young immigrant who found love and acceptance and respect and a sense of belonging in a street gang. The difference was that as Pascual began to mature, he admitted he became intoxicated with the fear he saw in others’ eyes.
“My madre was beside herself, man. She knew I was up to no good, and she was goin’ to church all the time and praying for me. But I wouldn’t listen. I was mad at God because my father had died. And I didn’t like church anyway. It was too crazy for me.”
Pascual said that as a teenager he told the leadership of the Latin Kings that he wanted to be a full-fledged member. “One of the dudes just told me flat out, no. He told me I was primitive. I didn’t even know what he was talking about. He said I had to grow up and be more mature before I could understand Kingism. It was like a religion to those guys.
“But you know what I loved to do? I loved to show off. So I asked him, what do I got to do to get some respect, and he told me the LKs had a blood-in, blood-out policy, just like all the other gangs. I knew what that meant. You had to fight somebody, maybe even within the Kings, to show that you weren’t afraid to make somebody bleed or bleed yourself, prove you were tough. I didn’t want to stop there. I told the guy, ‘Tell me who needs to be killed, and I’ll do it.’
“He laughed at me, man! He told me the LKs had a hit list, but it wasn’t for primitives. That was disrespect, man. I was so mad I could have killed him! I begged him to show me the list, but instead he just gave me a few names. Well, I knew who these guys were. They were big shots with the Disciples and the Lords. I said, ‘Let me get this straight: I kill one of these guys and I’m in?’
“He said, ‘Sure, primitive, if you don’t end up in a box yourself.’
“I got one of my friends, and we stole a video camera. Then I got him to record me sticking up a gun shop. You believe that? I was lookin’ at Glocks, but I knew they would be asking me for ID and all that before they’d even let me test it or anything. So my friend went to another register and bought ammo. Then, while he’s taping again, he tosses me the box, I load the gun before the guy can even say anything, and I point it right at him. I’m on tape, man, stealing a Glock. It gave me such a rush, I can’t tell you.”
“You weren’t afraid of anything?”
“Nothing!”
“But didn’t the gun shop have cameras too? Wouldn’t the guy recognize both of you?”
“I wasn’t a King yet, but my friend was, and the owner knew it. He didn’t want to bring anything like us down on his head. All it cost him was one gun and one box of ammo. You wouldn’t believe what I did next. I was too young to even have a driver’s license, but the older guys let us drive all the time. My friend and me, we hot-wired a car, and with him recording still, I drove right into Vice Lords territory and asked for one of the guys whose name I saw on the hit list.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I am!”
“You’re lucky to be alive. We’ve heard of rival gang members being murdered without a word, just because they drifted into the wrong neighborhood.”
“You don’t know how bad I wanted in, man. I sat behind the wheel of that car and a bunch of Lords surrounded us, guns out. I held up my hands and said I just wanted to talk to this guy. They laughed and threatened me and called me a crazy fool, but then they went and got him.
“He was impressed, you know? I could tell. Young LK wannabe comin’ onto his turf and just asking to talk to him. He told me to get my fat rear end out of the car so his boys could search me, and I said, ‘Sure.’ I got out and lifted my hands, but as a guy came to frisk me, I just grabbed my strap and started shooting. Hit List Man was the first to fall, then the guy who wanted to search me, and I don’t know how many others. They were all screaming and running, and I just jumped in the car and headed back to King territory. Would you believe we still show that recording to recruits?”
“And you were how old?”
“Not even sixteen yet.”
“And you’re what now?”
“Thirty-six. A lot more killing since then, amigo.” He pointed to the tattooed crosses encircling his neck. He had started on a second row. “Twenty-three.”
“How did you feel—right after that, I mean? Any trouble sleeping? Any conscience over it?”
“I only had trouble sleeping because of the excitement. I was still livin’ at home then. I was proud of myself, lying there a murderer while my mother slept in the next room. I was afraid of nothing. I had a whole new image and place in the Latin Kings, and everybody knew I’d shoot them dead for any reason, even another King.”
“No wonder you were in the leadership by the time you were twenty.”
“Straight up. Man, I knew I was going to hell. Only thing I felt bad about was my madre took the blame. She knew who I was and what I was, and she cried and prayed and pleaded and said it was all her fault. I don’t know how many times I told her it wasn’t and that this was all on me, but you know moms.”
Boone nodded.
“You know what my favorite story was back then, the one I used to keep everybody in line?”
Boone shook his head.
“Carlos Robles. You know that story?”
“Sure. The guy who got ground up and served in the meat loaf at Stateville back in ’83. How much of it is true?”
“All of it. He
wasn’t loyal, so a hit was put out on him right there in prison. Couple of our guys got a guard to let them use a downstairs room for a party. They was gonna celebrate his release in a couple of days. He was happy to go, you know? They get him down there, kill him, cut his head off, chop him up, and smuggle bags of him to the prison kitchen, where he becomes part of the main course. That was a pretty recent story by the time I joined, and back then I thought it was beautiful. You know they had to bury his skull, ’cause that wouldn’t process.”
“They dug that up in ’95, I think,” Boone said.
“There you go. And Stateville? They couldn’t find him anywhere, so until they found that skull, they thought he had escaped—two days before he was supposed to get out! Tell you something, man, a story like that will keep guys in line.”
“So you become a big deal, one of the most feared guys in Chicago.”
“Yeah, but I get a little too famous. I’m living the high life. All the money and women and toys I want. I wouldn’t have had to do any of the dirty work myself ever again. I had thousands of lieutenants who would do anything I said. But I loved being in the middle of all of it. I had a feeling I was being bugged and watched and followed, all that. But I got invited to a meeting with the head of the Chicago Outfit and went anyway. Talk about somebody bein’ watched. The feds, everybody had to be on his tail for years. How stupid was I?”
“Where’d you meet with him? You couldn’t have gone into his neighborhood.”
“No, man, those guys are smart. ’Least they think they are. They keep their business from their families. You don’t go to their houses. They have places. But I demanded neutral ground. I didn’t know what this guy wanted, but I sure wanted to find out. Anything to make the Kings bigger, you know? We met in one of the forest preserves.”
“And who was there?”
“Graziano Jacopo himself and a bunch of his guys. I went alone to show ’im I wasn’t scared of nothing. It worked. He looked scared the whole time, like I was gonna pull a blade on him or something. He says to me, ‘Coming by yourself is very impressive. Very risky but also impressive.’
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