by John Lansing
Jack slowed as he watched the gray car pull off the road into a strip-mall parking lot. He drove past, keeping his eyes straight ahead, and in his rearview mirror watched the men exit their vehicle. Jack did a quick run around the block and pulled over to the curb a half block away. The man on crutches, Raymond Higueras, made his way into the Black Stallion Inn. The bar shared space in the low-rent mall with a Laundromat, a Mexican panaderia, and a store that sold wedding dresses.
The Black Stallion Inn had no windows and the front facade was covered with rough-hewn planks. A blue neon horse with a wild mane reared up and down as if it were stomping a rattler to death. Jack enjoyed the symbolism, and as he watched the front door, another car pulled into the lot and parked. The two young men who walked into the bar had the dead eyes of gangbangers but were hardly street legal.
Nick had explained the tiered system of the 18th Street Angels while giving Jack and Tommy the tour of Ontario. It worked like the Mafia in Jack’s old stomping grounds. There were the “made men,” their lieutenants, and then the young sharks or soldiers who worked on their crews.
The 18th Street Angels, a Chicano street gang, also had three tiers: the Lil’ Angels, the Angelitos, and at the top of the food chain, the 18th Street Angels. To make it into the top tier from one of the other two groups, a young gangster needed to prove himself by killing or assist in the killing of a rival gang member, someone who had dissed the Angels in some way.
Jack checked his parking meter and saw that it was after six. The sun was about to shut down for the day. Staying close to the storefronts across the street, using their thrown shadows, he snapped off a series of pictures of the cars in the strip-mall lot, capturing as many license plate numbers as he could get from his vantage point.
He didn’t want to make his presence known until he was ready.
Seeing the door to the Black Stallion Inn swing open, Bertolino dropped his camera, spun on his heel, and turned to face the window of a video store.
Raymond Higueras, finding a way to swagger on crutches, clomped across the lot with a young woman in tow. In the window’s reflection he could see the couple walk over to a compact car. He braced the young girl against the car, and their good-bye kiss turned into a groping clinch.
Jack took the opportunity to walk back down the block to the Plymouth and get in. The woman was now in the driver’s seat of a Toyota Corolla. She applied some lipstick in the vanity mirror, another thick layer of black eyeliner, and then drove out of the lot, waving good-bye to her bruised warrior. Jack snapped off a few shots of the old car as she drove past him. He could make a positive ID of the woman, but he wasn’t sure if the pictures would read through the black tint of his windshield and the encroaching night sky.
Balancing on one crutch, Higueras pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and took a deep drag. The cigarette’s tip glowed orange and his expression was smug as he glanced up and down the block on the exhale, not seeing anything that piqued his interest.
King of the world.
The door to the bar swung open again and his two coworkers spilled out, obviously feeling no pain, and sauntered over to their car. David Reyes helped Higueras into the backseat and they motored out. Jack fired up the Plymouth and waited until their car was a safe distance up the street before turning on his lights and carefully following.
—
All three men lived within a six-block radius of each other in south Ontario. Jack noted the two new addresses. Then he picked a point somewhere in the middle and parked. From here he would walk to his destination.
Raymond Higueras’s house had a similar layout to the Reyes house. Every room in the small bungalow was lit as Jack, dressed in black, carefully made his way around the perimeter of the building, checking windows, his nine-millimeter out of the shoulder holster and ready. He could hear a neighbor’s television set, smell onions wafting from someone’s kitchen exhaust, heard a few barking dogs, but thankfully the street remained empty. More important to Jack, none of the surrounding houses had a direct view of Higueras’s front door.
Jack’s target was alone in the house, lounging with his cast propped up on a scarred wooden coffee table, watching a rerun of Two and a Half Men. He’d taken his work shirt off and his cut, bare chest, from the neck down, was an inked shrine to the 18th Street Angels. Jack could see a small mirror next to his foot with a pile of cocaine big enough to satisfy an addict’s itch for a week. A bottle of Dos Equis was sitting opened next to the mirror, and he realized that his own throat was bone dry.
Jack Bertolino had spent many years on the NYPD serving warrants on drug cells and money-laundering cells with a team of trained men. Even with electronic battering rams, shields, automatic weapons, flash grenades, and a tactical plan firmly in place, each raid was a life-or-death experience. He never knew what was waiting on the other side of the door, whether he was going to get shot in the face as soon as he entered the premises.
Tonight Jack was going in alone, illegally, and without backup. There was no other way.
He checked the road for foot traffic one more time, and when he was sure it was all clear, he stepped silently up onto the small front porch and sucked in a breath.
Jack pounded his fist on the door and shouted, “Police, open the door! Open the fucking door!”
He heard a shuffling, the banging of crutches, something getting knocked over, a “shit” intoned from within. “What the fuck!” Higueras cried as he cracked open the door.
Jack’s foot pistoned out, snapping the security chain and splintering the wooden door into the gangster’s face, knocking him backward into the room. His broken nose gushed blood. His .38 skittered across the stained hardwood floor. His crutches toppled, his arms pinwheeled, and he crashed down hard on his back.
In a blur of motion Jack kicked the door shut behind him, straddled Higueras, and jammed the barrel of his Glock into the young man’s throat.
Jack chambered a round. The precision metallic ratcheting sound a Glock nine millimeter makes when a bullet is forced out of the gun’s clip and into the killing chamber is a universal sound that good guys and bad guys and wild animals alike all understand on a primal level. When he had Higueras’s undivided attention, he flipped him onto his stomach, snapped a pair of plastic cuffs around his wrists, and shoved the gun into the base of his neck.
Jack fought to control his emotions as he prepared to conduct the interview. “Who ordered you to run the Lexus off the road?”
“No habla,” Higueras croaked.
“Bullshit. Your teacher’s name was Gainey and she says you were mediocre, your rap sheet says you’re a scumbag, so let’s cut the crap. You tell me who paid you to run the Lexus off the road or I’ll end this. Now.”
Jack twisted the barrel of the Glock into Higueras’s neck.
“Never got a name, just got more product. All over the phone,” he lied.
“Who pulled the strings, scumbag? Set up the phone call?”
Raymond Higueras was in pain but not enough to spill. The coke and the beer were making him brave. Plus, time was running short. Jack didn’t know if Higueras’s squeeze was going to show up unexpectedly.
Jack lifted his gun and smashed it down onto the plaster cast, shattering it near the ankle. He shifted his weight and leaned his 180-pound frame onto the broken leg with his knee while he jammed Higueras’s head into the floor. The gangster emitted a moan that set Jack’s teeth on edge.
“Who pulled the strings?” he quietly demanded.
“My manager.”
“At Royce?”
The boy’s voice was sparked with pain. “He’s an OG. He hires Angels on probation.”
“Who runs him?”
“Fuck you. They’ll kill me.”
“Who killed the woman?” Jack said as the memory of Mia came flooding back. It took every ounce of his control not to pull the trigger.
&
nbsp; “Fuck you, pendejo.”
Jack knew the clock was ticking. He dragged Higueras into the bathroom, opened the cabinet under the sink, and attached his bound hands to the drainpipe with another plastic cuff.
“You’re a dead man,” Higueras said, spitting as his broken nose streamed more blood into his open mouth.
“No habla, asshole,” Jack said as he unleashed a backhanded snot shot that hit Higueras’s jaw like a hammer. That would shut up his macho bullshit for a while, Jack thought as he wiped down the cabinet door with a rank towel, and moved into the living room.
Jack pulled up a sofa pillow that had been used to hide the cocaine and mirror. He kicked Higueras’s gun into the center of the room so it could not be missed. The punk’s prints were all over the .38, and he was headed back to prison for violating parole. New illegal drugs and weapons charges would dominate the next few years of his life.
Higueras’s cell phone was lying on the wooden table and Jack pocketed it. He knew he was taking evidence, but nothing else he had done that night was by the book. Jack was traveling through new territory and needed all the help he could get.
Charlie Sheen was cavorting in bed with a voluptuous blonde as Jack turned up the volume on the television set, being careful not to leave prints. He then used the tail of his black T-shirt to close the front door behind him.
Jack walked silently through the empty streets toward the safety of the Plymouth. At night the neighborhood looked so suburban, almost pleasant. But behind the facade of normalcy, the area was controlled by stone-cold killers. Just like Jack’s old neighborhood.
He took in deep breaths of the cold night air to slow his heart rate. When he slid into the car and locked the doors, he pulled out Higueras’s cell phone, dialed 911, reported shots fired, and gave them Raymond Higueras’s address. Jack was already motoring out of the area, heading in the direction of the I-10, before he heard the first approaching siren.
31
Jack wasn’t much of a beer drinker, but he saw the bottom of the frosted mug before he came up for a breath. Nick Aprea was standing next to him at a quiet local bar in Manhattan Beach, and he signaled the bartender to pour another, like a man at a blackjack table requesting another card.
Then he bit into a lime wedge, licked some salt off his closed fist, threw back a shot of Herradura Silver, and tapped the bar again.
“It’s a look,” Nick said, referring to the salsa stain that had dried on Jack’s black jeans. “Say, I got a call from Vince over in Ontario. Bad fuckin’ luck for one of the Angels on the list you sent. His face doesn’t match his picture anymore. Any idea how that happened?”
“Not a clue,” Jack said as the bartender gracefully slid a second draft down the length of the bar. It came to rest directly in front of Jack’s hand.
Jack lifted the mug and took a slow sip.
“Good to hear,” Nick said. “They fielded an anonymous 911 call from Raymond Higueras’s own phone. And yet said Higueras was sort of tied up at the time of the call. Contemplating some one-on-one with an orthopedic surgeon was how it was related to me.”
“One of life’s mysteries,” Jack said, relaxing for the first time all day.
“Well, the phone should definitely disappear after it gives up its secrets, one would think.”
“You should become a life coach, Nick, what with all your good advice.”
Nick looked pleased with the idea. “I’m thinking of branching out. You’re right. I’m full of untapped talent.”
“You’re full of something, that’s for sure.”
His smile grew broader. “That’s what my wife tells me on a regular basis. I just nod and agree. Works out pretty well for the both of us.”
Nick replayed the ritual with the lime, a pinch of salt, and then the tequila with the practiced skill of a priest blessing sacramental wine.
“I ran the manager’s photo through ViCAP,” Nick said after his face registered satisfaction with the Herradura. “Roman Ortiz is in fact an OG. Been a member of the 18th Street Angels since he was jumped in the late sixties, and he is purported to have deep ties to the Mexican Mafia.”
Nick had just corroborated Higueras’s story.
“Alvarez is paying protection money to the Mexican Mafia,” Jack noted.
Nick rolled the implication of that around and continued.
“Roman did a twenty-year stint at Corcoran for first-degree murder. That was the only one he got nailed for, but his sheet woulda made Capone proud. He’s a bad man who has been operating under the radar since his release in ninety-nine.”
“Well, if he’s an upstanding citizen, he shouldn’t mind if we go up on his phones, work and home.”
“In a perfect world,” Nick said, meaning no fucking way, “I’d try reaching out to the feds when you have more than a hunch, something verifiable. Only way a wiretap will fly in this environment.”
Jack understood and started thinking out loud. “I think we should check out the owner of the bus I saw roll into Royce Motors. If the coke’s Dominican, it had to be hitching a ride west somehow.”
“Good notion. I’ve got a friend at the DMV. Do you want me to drop the hammer on the other two players?”
“No. Let’s keep our powder dry. They don’t feel right for Mia. And the time line is wrong for the latest and greatest. They had their hands full trying to drive Tommy and me to an early grave when Ricky Hernandez was killed. I don’t want to pull the alarm on Royce until I have a few more answers.”
“Righteous.”
Nick signaled for a third shot and threw a credit card onto the bar. Jack pushed it back and threw down his own. Drinks were on him.
“The tats on the severed thigh matched the gang ink on Hernandez,” Nick said. “Ran with a group that operates next door to the Angels. They’re taxed for the right to sell product in Angel territory. Someone was skimming or just looked at one of these crazy fucks sideways.”
“What about the locks on Hernandez’s door?” Jack asked. “Any scratches on the cylinder?”
“It looks like the killers entered through the back door. Yes, there were markings. The tech didn’t think it was a clean enough match with yours for a conviction, but I’m thinking we’re looking at the same guy or guys.”
“There were two men in the car at Mia’s,” Jack said more forcefully than he intended. “And there’s no way one man could have strung up Ricky Hernandez.”
“We’re on the same page.”
“Anything on the knot used to hang our guy?” Jack asked.
“I’m gettin’ to it . . .”
Nick pulled out his dog-eared pad and found the page where he had made the notation.
“Called a packing knot. First knot they teach Boy Scouts,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “My guess, this is one kid that got booted out of the troop, if that’s where he learned his technique.”
“We weren’t big on the Scouts on Staten Island,” Jack said. “You could get smacked up the side of your head you walked around the neighborhood in that getup.”
That elicited a snort from Nick, who continued, “Used for baling, parcels, oh, and uh, roasts. You know, as in meat.”
“Meat, huh?”
“They also call it a butcher’s knot.”
Nick dropped that last detail, like a pebble in a still pond, and waited to see Jack’s response.
Jack took a long pull on his beer, turned slowly, and his eyes locked on Nick’s. “That makes an awful lot of sense.”
“Sure as shit does.”
—
Jack Bertolino was sitting in a small dark room. Soft music was being piped into his cubicle as he waited to receive a Swedish massage from a Thai masseuse.
Jack pulled off his T-shirt and stretched out in his underwear on a massage table. It was a little hot in the room and he decided to lie on top o
f the sheets. He wondered about the protocol as far as nudity went and thought staying in his skivvies was the right move.
He replayed the phone conversation he had enjoyed late the night before with DDA Leslie Sager. She had called to invite him to dinner, her treat, when their schedules permitted. Jack kicked himself for not making the call first, but was surprisingly happy to have received it. They decided that Saturday might work for them both and agreed to check in again on Friday.
Jack’s back was knotted from last night’s violence, and he knew that if he didn’t get some work done on it he wouldn’t be any good sitting surveillance. He also decided it would be better to keep some distance between himself and the 18th Street Angels for a few days, because after Raymond Higueras’s story leaked, he was sure the gang would be on high alert and make his job that much more difficult. He also had to stay cocked and locked at all times, because if they were going to exact retribution, they knew where he lived.
A lilting feminine voice from the other side of the door rang like a bell and asked if he was ready. Jack said yes. He looked forward to some relief, and then the door opened.
The woman screamed—ear piercing!
Jack twisted around, strained his back, and struggled not to fall off the table.
“Get under the sheet!” she hollered, way over the top.
“I’ve got my underwear on, for crying out loud. What’s the problem here?” he said, startled. And Jack was not an easy man to startle.
The petite woman spat out a torrent of words. “I almost got shut down once, and I’m mildly autistic, and I have Asperger’s syndrome, and I have a hard time editing myself, and I forgot my card.”
Jack grabbed up the sheet and covered himself. They stared each other down for an extended beat.
“Are we all right here . . . because this was supposed to be relaxing,” Jack said, knowing full well he had one foot out the door.