City Of The Damned: Expanded Edition

by Stephen Knight

Lopez walked up to the door and rang the bell. He heard nothing from inside, and could see nothing through the windows on either side of him—both had been blacked out to prevent anyone from seeing anything the MS13 crew wanted to keep secret. Lopez cleared his throat and tried to contain his nervousness. He had a Glock 9mm pistol in his leather jacket, but that was expected. No one tried to run with the MS13 gang unarmed, and anyone they did business with was expected to be strapped as well. Lopez hadn’t tried to join the gang, but he had passed himself off for a fairly large buyer with a Latin gang in El Monte, up in northeast LA. The fact that he had grown up an El Monte Flores and had real street cred as part of his portfolio had helped ease matters a bit. But Arce hadn’t been stupid. He’d looked into Lopez for quite some time, but had found nothing.

  A little metal slot in the door slid open. The room beyond was dark, as Lopez had thought it would be; no one looking out wanted to be silhouetted against a brightly-lit room.

  “Qué usted desea?” barked a voice from behind the door. What do you want?

  “It’s Lopez. Arce is expecting me,” Lopez replied in Spanish.

  “You’ll have to be searched. You’re armed?”

  “Of course.”

  The slot slapped closed. Lopez sweated it out on the front porch for a moment. He turned and glanced both ways down the street behind him, just in case someone tried something a little tricky, like walk up behind him and put a gun to his head and blow his brains out for being a dirty cop. There was no one, but intelligence had determined that there were gunmen friendly to MS13 in the house across the street who would act as Arce’s backup team if something went down. Lopez could practically feel their eyes on him.

  Locks were thrown, and the door opened a fraction of an inch. Lopez could sense more than see the pale light that slipped past the door.

  “Come inside,” said the voice. “Slowly, and with your hands in sight.”

  Lopez raised both hands shoulder-high. He pushed on the door with his left hand, and slowly eased himself across the threshold. The room beyond was dark, tepidly illuminated by a dimmed overhead light. The scent of overcooked pupusas reached his nostrils.

  After three steps into the room, the door slammed closed behind him and rough hands grasped Lopez’s left wrist, yanking him off-balance. Lopez swore as he was pinned against the dirty wall. There were holes in the plaster the size of a man’s fist, as if it had served time in the service of some MS13 banger’s anger management therapy.

  “What the—!”

  Two small, dark-skinned men confronted him, pinning his arms to the wall. Behind them was a much larger man. Lopez couldn’t make out much of their features due to the poor light, but he presumed they were El Salvadoran from the accented Spanish. And MS13 only recruited Salvadorans or Hondurans wherever possible.

  The big man held a shotgun in both hands. It was pointed directly at Lopez.

  “Speak English?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Lopez gasped.

  “Good. Neither of my friends do, so for your ears only, you make a move, I’ll kill you. And I’ll shoot right through them if I need to put you down. Understand, ese?”

  Lopez tried to swallow, but he had no spit left. “Yeah,” he croaked.

  “Keep your hands up,” the man said in Spanish. “My friends will search you for weapons, wires, recording devices, anything that might make you into something you said you weren’t. We find something we don’t like, you’re dead. Any last words before we begin?”

  Oh dear Jesus and Mary, don’t let them find it—

  “None,” Lopez responded with as much false bravado as he could muster.

  The two short Central Americans were efficient and not as rough as they could have been. One of them found his Glock immediately and showed it to the big man with a wide smile. Lopez could see that he was missing one of his incisors in the dim light.

  “Where’d you get such a nice pistol?” the big man with the shotgun asked.

  “Killed a cop for it,” Lopez answered. In truth, the weapon had belonged to a fallen police officer, but it had been recovered over a year ago. It had been delivered to Lopez as part of his cover story.

  “Killed a police officer, huh? So what,” the big man said dismissively.

  The small men searched Lopez thoroughly. They found the knife in the sleeve of his jacket. They took his wallet and keys and change and his cell phone. One of them went through the wallet carefully, and he showed everything to the big man. Finally, the big man ordered that the lights be brought up, and one of the El Salvadorans reached for the dimmer on the wall. He twisted it, and Lopez blinked against the sudden brightness.

  The big man with the shotgun had a nasty purple scar cutting down the length of his face, from the middle of his forehead to the right corner of his chin. His right eyebrow had been parted, and the skin there had knitted together in a whitish weal. He had been a handsome man before being wounded, Lopez thought, almost Hollywood handsome, like a young Ricardo Montalban. He couldn’t have been more than thirty years old, and the breadth of his shoulders showed he worked with weights religiously. His eyes were green, and they glittered with a single-minded intensity. Lopez prayed he was really as calm as he looked.

  The two small men were as Lopez had guessed, dark-skinned Salvadorans with black hair and eyes that almost matched. Each still pinned Lopez’s arms to the wall. The tall man nodded to them, and they stepped back, releasing him. Lopez slowly brought his arms down to his sides and looked around the room. It was the living room, about twenty feet by ten, and the only furnishings were an old leather couch and two well-worn chairs clustered around a low coffee table. The dun-colored carpet was stained and filthy.

  “Take off your clothes,” the big man ordered.

  Lopez was indignant. “What?”

  The big man hefted the shotgun as his reply.

  Lopez clenched his teeth and shrugged out of his jacket. One of the Salvadorans snatched it up and turned it inside out, then ran a Garrett metal detector wand over it. It squealed several times.

  “Metal zippers,” Lopez told the big man. He shrugged and motioned for Lopez to continue by shifting the shotgun slightly. Lopez sighed, and didn’t have to feign his anger at the treatment he was receiving. He slowly unbuttoned his shirt, wondering if the metal buttons would do the trick. Not that it mattered. If they took the shirt from him, there was no chance at all his fellow officers would be able to tell if he was in imminent danger or not. He pulled off the shirt, and the undershirt beneath that. He tossed them to the Salvadorans contemptuously.

  “Careful, ese. You might be a member of EMF, but that doesn’t mean anything with us. You piss us off, you die.” Shotgun Man smiled slightly. Lopez was sure he’d prefer Lopez was dead.

  The Salvadoran with the metal detector swiped it over the shirt. The metal buttons did the trick, even though the Salvadoran was thorough.

  “Keep going, ese. Give us the whole show,” Shotgun Man said in Spanish. “We’re dying to know if it’s boxers or briefs.”

  The two Salvadorans laughed. Lopez clenched his teeth. He kicked off his boots and held them to the Salvadoran with the metal detector. He took them, scanned them, then tossed them to his companion for a more thorough visual inspection. Lopez tugged off his socks, and stepped out of his baggy jeans. He wore black briefs beneath. He handed the jeans to the Salvadoran with the metal detector, his eyes locked with Shotgun Man’s.

  “Now we need to know if you’re cut or uncut,” Shotgun Man said, grinning.

  “What the fuck is this?!” Lopez snarled. He could feel his face flushing with rage.

  Shotgun Man only patted the sawed-off Remington with one hand.

  Lopez pulled off the underwear and tossed them to the Salvadoran. He couldn’t be expected to have manners now, not while standing stark naked in an MS13 gang den.

  “Say hello to his little friend!” Shotgun Man cracked, and the Salvadorans guffawed with him. Lopez’s vision began to turn red with ra
ge. Even under the circumstances, his Latino temper had no choice but to flare up.

  “You guys getting off on this?” he snapped, his Spanish clipped and sharp.

  Shotgun Man shrugged while the Salvadorans went through his clothes. Finally, they looked at him and shrugged their shoulders. Shotgun Man relaxed slightly, and pointed toward the hallway at the opposite end of the room.

  “That way,” he said.

  Lopez held out his right hand for his clothes. Shotgun Man shook his head.

  “Just the way you are,” he said.

  “You have to be kidding me,” Lopez snarled. “You expect me to conduct business like this? Are you crazy, vato?”

  “It is what it is,” Shotgun Man said solemnly. “Play or pay, ese.”

  Lopez looked down the dark hallway at the end of the living room. His anger was beginning to fade, and real fear was just waiting to sweep into the space. Visions of his body being dismembered in a bathtub were hard to turn off, especially since it was an MS13 specialty. He looked down at the filthy carpet distastefully.

  “At least give me my boots,” he said. “You can’t expect me to walk around here with bare feet.”

  Shotgun Man considered this for a moment, then nodded to one of the shorter men. One of the Salvadorans picked up Lopez’s boots and tossed them to him. Lopez slipped into them with a sigh. There was no way to avoid looking ridiculous, but he had to admit that the boots didn’t exactly help reclaim some of his manhood.

  “Go,” Shotgun Man said.

  Lopez did as instructed. He was well past having any choices now.

  He walked down the carpeted hallway and toward another metal fire door. Light issued forth from under the door, and Lopez could hear soft music. Shotgun Man grabbed Lopez’s right shoulder suddenly and placed the shotgun against the back of his head. Lopez stiffened and started to tense up, ready to spin and go down fighting.

  “Easy now, ese. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  One of the small Salvadorans slipped past and knocked on the door. He said something in a language that Lopez didn’t quite understand; it was likely a Salvadoran dialect that had existed long before the conquistadors had brought Spanish to Central America. Lopez didn’t care. All he was focused on was the cool metal kissing the back of his shaved head.

  A voice answered from inside the room, and the music was turned off. More locks were thrown, and the door opened. Lopez squinted against the bright light. Shotgun Man pushed him forward gently, and the police officer stepped into the next room. He blinked rapidly.

  The master suite of the house had been converted into an office of sorts. Another leather couch sat against one wall, and two dark-skinned women giggled when they saw Lopez’s nudity. Two torchiere lamps stood on either side of the couch. At a square table flanked by two leather chairs, two rough-looking MS13 bangers were counting through wads of $100 bills. They looked at Lopez without expression, and one of them with the initials “MS” tattooed onto his forehead said something to the women that shut them up immediately. The two windows in the room were blacked out and barred.

  Behind a large desk opposite of the couch, Alonzo Arce sat in a padded office chair. He was speaking on a cellular phone, and he looked at Lopez with a neutral expression. His black hair was cut short, but speckles of gray caught and held the light. He wore a neat, short beard and a fairly conservative dress shirt that was open to mid-chest, beneath which gold necklaces gleamed and a myriad series of tattoos writhed. Arce’s skin was dark, like the rest of the Salvadorans in the room. Looking at him like this, wearing his bling while seated behind an expensive desk, he looked more like a successful talent agent than a notorious MS13 gangster. Lopez didn’t let the looks fool him.

  Arce motioned him into the room, then jerked his head toward one of the men seated at the table. The man rose immediately and crossed over to a closet. He pulled out a plush terry cloth robe and handed it to Lopez.

  “Put it on,” the man said softly. He returned to his seat. Lopez pulled on the bathrobe quickly and knotted the sash at his waist. It smelled fresh and clean, and he wondered how many people had worn it before him.

  Shotgun Man finally lowered his weapon, and he nudged Lopez toward one of the chairs facing Arce’s big desk. Lopez stepped forward hesitantly, then finally walked the last few steps with some strut and settled into the chair. Arce looked at him while listening to the voice on his phone. His expression betrayed nothing. Lopez wondered who he was speaking to.

  Arce finally grunted something into the phone and disconnected. He tossed it onto the desk and looked past Lopez at Shotgun Man.

  “He’s clean,” Shotgun Man reported in English. “One gun, one blade, not much else. ID matches.”

  Arce nodded, then said something in that strange language again. Shotgun Man answered, and he and the two short Salvadorans left. They closed the door behind them, and one of the women locked it.

  “You recognize the language?” Arce asked, leaning back in his chair.

  Lopez shook his head.

  “Lenca,” Arce told him. “All these people, they’re from my town. Chilango,” he added, as if that had some special significance. Lopez nodded knowingly, even though he doubted he could find the town on the map. Arce seemed to sense this.

  “It’s small,” he went on. “So small it could almost be hidden by a pile of beans.”

  “Mexican capital area has a place with the same name,” Lopez added.

  Arce shrugged. “You want to do business with us, flower boy?” he asked, using a derogatory expression for EMF members.

  Lopez leaned forward. “I’m not here for any other reason,” he said.

  “You need to pay up front. We’ll give you all the meth you can sell, but we get our cut in advance. And we only ship in volume, you follow me, ese?”

  “How much volume, how much cash?” Lopez asked.

  “Five kilo minimum, four hundred grand on delivery,” Arce said. “Street price is almost a hundred dollars a gram, so you can make out on that if you spread it out throughout the San Gabriels.”

  “Steep,” Lopez said. “But it can be done. When and where?”

  “So fast,” Arce said mildly.

  “Not so fast,” Lopez responded. “Cops are cracking down on local production. We want to stay in business in El Monte, we need to get product from someplace else. MS and EMF don’t have much of a beef right now. If we can get it from you, we’ll deal. We won’t keep looking for a bargain, so long as you don’t start squeezing us with costs. And if the street price dips, you have to adjust your rates so both of us can stay in business.”

  Arce said nothing.

  Lopez waited.

  Arce stirred after a moment, scratching his chin. He continued staring at Lopez with his deep, liquid brown eyes. The only sound in the room came from the two men counting money on the table.

  “We’ll give you a fair deal,” Arce said eventually. “Our connections can make a lot of product, and if you’re smart in how you sell, you can keep the price elevated no matter what the cops do. Our connections won’t be busted, so the supply will always be there.”

  “Your connections must be in Mexico, then,” Lopez said.

  “If you think that, then you can go find them yourself. You don’t need MS for that.”

  Lopez shrugged. “If we could, we would. We have some suppliers from there, but getting it across the border is becoming more difficult, thanks to 9-11.”

  Arce mirrored the shrug. “I got no problems with that, ese. We have the product, we have the routes, we have the system. You want in, you have to pay.”

  “Pay’s not a problem right now. But we might need some flexibility from your side. The market can only get bigger, but if the cops come down on us too hard, we’ll have to move smaller amounts.”

  “Your problem, ese, not mine. You want to seal this deal, or not?”

  Lopez opened his mouth to answer, but a sudden pounding from the front of the house cut him off. Arce looked toward
the closed door with narrowed eyes, and the two men at the table stirred. They reached for weapons; one had an M4 carbine, the other an Uzi. Arce’s eyes cut back to Lopez.

  “You got friends coming over?” he asked.

  Lopez shook his head. “The only way I was going to be able to seal this deal was if I did it solo.”

  There was a knock on the fire door separating the office from the rest of the house. Arce nodded to one of the women sitting on the couch, and she unlocked the door and opened it. Shotgun Man stood on the other side, a queer look in his eyes. He and Arce had a brief exchange, where Arce apparently did most of the questioning and Shotgun Man offered up a few answers. Arce sent Shotgun Man away with a nod, and then rose from behind his desk. He pulled out an M16 assault rifle; it must have been lying beside him the entire time. He also wore a Glock pistol on his hip.

  “What’s going on?” Lopez asked.

  “An old friend’s come by to visit,” Arce said. “Problem is, he hasn’t been around in a while, and that’s got me curious.”

  “Let me get my clothes,” Lopez said suddenly.

  Arce stepped around the desk and shook his head. “You stay here. We’re not done yet.” With that, he and the two other men left the room, and the girl closed the door behind them.

  ***

  Arce walked into the room followed by his two gunmen. Shotgun Man stood beside the door, a hand on the little lever that he used to open the slot there. Arce nodded to him, and he flipped the metal plate aside. Arce glanced through the opening and at the shadowy figure outside.

  “Léon,” Arce said.

  “Yes,” said the figure outside. “It’s me, Alonzo. Let me in.”

  Arce frowned. It certainly sounded like Léon, but something wasn’t right.

  “Léon, where have you been for the past three days?” Arce asked. “Why have you been missing?”

  There was a moment’s pause. “I was with Mathilda,” the voice whispered again.

  Arce sighed and shook his head. He exchanged a look with Shotgun Man, and he shook his head as well. Léon was one of Arce’s most trusted subordinates, but once he had gotten involved with a Nicaraguan hooker named Mathilda, he hadn’t been straight ever since. Arce nodded to Shotgun Man and stepped back.