by Lee Butcher
Mickie Mashburn was at her station, but she listened to the radio reports about the robbery and shooting. She knew that Lois was in the thick of it, especially when she heard transmissions from Baker 13, Lois’s designation. The bad feeling she had experienced early that morning had gradually intensified.
She was filled with dread when the radio broadcast, “Officer down, officer down.” Mickie was sick to hear that a comrade had fallen. Please don’t let it be Lois, she thought. She thought of the ominous feeling she had experienced that morning. She thought of the short time she and Lois had before retiring and having time to do all of the things they wanted.
But when she saw a lieutenant coming toward her, and from the expression on her face, Mickie’s heart sank. Even before the lieutenant told her, Mickie knew that Lois had been shot and killed. Mickie felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach. Her knees turned to rubber and she couldn’t breathe as tears streamed from her eyes.
Isaac Davis, a sophomore at the University of South Florida, lay on a futon in his living room watching television. He had taken the day off from school to recuperate from the flu. He thought he heard firecrackers going off in the parking lot from kids celebrating Independence Day a couple of days late. There was a lot of yelling outside, too, and it occurred to him that a mother was chastising a child for playing with fireworks.
Suddenly there were three loud thuds against his door. Someone jiggled the doorknob, as if trying to break in. On the fourth blow, the door splintered off its hinges and came crashing into his apartment. A woman carrying a gun stumbled in. Following her was a man who had a gun that appeared to be a military weapon.
Davis quickly considered his options for escape. The only door leading outside, besides the one that had been kicked in, would have left him trapped on the mezzanine. The only thing he could think to do was to hide in the bedroom closet.
Davis turned and ran.
“He’s in here,” Paula said.
“Get him,” Chino ordered.
Paula caught him in the bedroom before he could get inside the closet.
“Come on,” she said.
“Don’t hurt me,” he begged.
“We’re not going to hurt you.”
Paula marched him into the living room.
“Come here for a second,” Chino said.
“Please don’t hurt me,” Davis said. “Please don’t kill me.”
Davis thought the man and woman looked familiar, but he couldn’t place them. He didn’t know whether this should make him more, or less, afraid. They were two strangers who had broken into his apartment with guns.
Chino grabbed Davis and marched him to the smashed door.
“C’mon,” he said.
At the door Chino looked around Davis’s shoulder and yelled, “I have a hostage!”
Then he unleashed several volleys of gunfire before moving away from the door. He ordered Davis to wait in the dining room with Paula while he forced the broken door upright, and then he braced it closed with two dining-room chairs.
Davis noticed that the home invaders seemed confused and in a state of panic. Chino paced and kept saying, “Oh boy. I’ve done something really bad. I think I killed a cop.” Paula sat with her head in her hands, mumbling. They both seemed to be at the end of their ropes.
In just seconds Davis recognized them. He had caught glimpses of Chino when their vehicles passed in the parking lot. And he had seen both Chino and Paula in the swimming pool. Davis and his roommate couldn’t remember names, so they had nicknames for everyone. Chino was “nasty belly man,” but was also known as “the monkey guy,” because they thought he looked like a monkey. Once Davis made that association, he connected Paula with Chino and a beautiful little girl that he and his roommate called “Star-Kist.” They had no nickname for Paula, who seemed to be a nonentity who never spoke or lifted her eyes from looking downward.
He had not had a conversation with Chino, either.
Both Chino and Paula were extremely tense and frightened, but Chino was also snide. “She thought she could kill me,” he said in a mocking tone. Davis thought he was disparaging the police officer he had shot. Chino couldn’t stop pacing and talking to himself. Paula sat in the dining room, burying her head in her hands and shaking her head. They were frightened, and so was Davis. But so far, they hadn’t threatened him. Maybe they wouldn’t kill him, after all, he thought.
As minutes passed, the situation became more intense. Paula and Chino made Davis think of dogs that had been chased, trapped, and had nowhere else to go. He thought they were afraid to surrender and afraid to fight. Like stricken deer caught in headlights, he thought.
“Come on,” Chino said. “Come with me.”
Chino left Paula sitting in the dining room while he marched Davis around the apartment to look out the windows. If anyone was going to be shot at a window, it wasn’t going to be Chino. Davis peeked out the windows. He had never seen so many policemen, some of whom were wearing what looked like combat gear.
Chino took Davis back into the apartment. He looked just as scared as Paula. But mostly he seemed angry. Davis had never seen anyone so angry. Davis went to the dining room and sat down, which Chino had ordered him to do. They all stayed in the dining room because the only furniture in the living room was the futon on which Davis had been resting when the intruders burst in.
Chino paced and mumbled continually. “We did something really, really bad! Do you think I killed a cop?”
When Davis had heard the popping sounds in the parking lot earlier, he had thought of firecrackers going off. Now he realized that it had been gunfire. Chino made Davis lower all the blinds and periodically made him look outside to see what the police were doing. When Davis was sitting, Chino lowered the gun, but he kept it pointed at him when he made Davis move around to check outside the windows.
Only minutes had passed since the home invasion occurred, but it seemed longer to Davis. Paula took the bullets out of Lois’s gun and placed the gun on the table. Chino fiddled with the magazine of his gun, taking it out and counting the bullets before he put it back in.
“Do you have a roommate?” Chino asked.
“He’s not here.”
Chino, staying clear of the windows, checked each room to see for himself.
Paula sat fidgeting with her hands most of the time. She touched her hair, hugged herself, and rocked; she knit her fingers together and buried her face in her hands. The longer they were there, the more nervous and unpredictable they became. Chino made Davis continually look out the blinds to see what was happening, and he followed him around with the gun trained on him.
Paula clicked on the television set and the robbery and shooting were being broadcast on every channel. The television screen showed the apartment complex, a circling helicopter, police cars with flashing lights and howling sirens, and scores of policemen with an assortment of guns.
That’s when Chino started talking about them committing suicide.
Chapter 5
Melba and Luis Gutierrez left Medellín, Colombia, in 1983, the same year that forty people were murdered in that city during a weekend of drug-related killings. The Colombian city, home of the world’s most powerful and ruthless drug syndicate, had the highest murder rate in the world. Cocaine dealers, such as Pablo Escobar and Carlos Lehder Rivas, even recruited children to act as bodyguards, lookouts, mules and sicarios (assassins), who murdered their victims from speeding motorcycles. Children were not immune from murder, either. The Colombian Department of Criminal Studies and Identification estimated that twelve hundred children were murdered in 1983.
“Grandpas bury their grandchildren here,” one Colombian said.
To protect their infant daughter, and to make a better life for themselves, Luis and Melba Gutierrez immigrated to New York, where they found a one-room apartment in the Bronx. They lived there with their daughter, Paula, and Louisa, who was born a year later.
None of them spoke English, and both par
ents had to work hard to support the family. The Bronx was a tough area of New York, but Luis and Melba found it to be an improvement over Medellín. The cold winters and hot summers, however, made them yearn for the more temperate climate in Colombia.
Paula enrolled in Public School 122 and attended bilingual classes. She was an average student, who got along with her classmates, even though she was terribly shy. Eventually the Gutierrez family moved into a larger apartment in the Bronx, where they could have more privacy. Stephanie, Paula’s youngest sister, was born when Paula was six, just a few months after the family immigrated to America.
At the age of twelve, Paula was restless and bored with school. There was a much bigger world outside of the classroom and she wanted to explore it. She started skipping school, wandering around the city, or hanging out at shopping malls with other kids. Paula had more than a passing interest in boys and they liked her. Both parents worked and had trouble finding the time they needed to control their adventuresome daughter.
Soroya Benitez was one of Paula’s best friends during their preteen and early teenage years. Soroya practically lived at Paula’s apartment. They smoked pot together, even before they were teenagers, but managed to avoid harder drugs, such as LSD and crack cocaine.
Luis and Melba worried about their daughter. Devout Roman Catholics, they took their daughters to church and encouraged them to follow the church’s teachings on morality. They worried about Paula’s falling grades, skipping classes, and going to malls with kids they didn’t find desirable. They saw their daughter headed for trouble.
“You need to have more discipline,” Luis told her.
“This isn’t Colombia,” Paula said. “Things are different here.”
As Catholics, and South Americans, they believed that Paula should be a virgin when she got married. They suspected that Paula was sexually active even before she was a teenager. Paula denied it, but became pregnant when she was thirteen.
The pregnancy caused a major upheaval in the family. Paula wanted to keep the baby. She didn’t want to give it up for adoption or, even worse, have an abortion. Luis and Melba were torn between what the Catholic Church taught them, and what they believed was common sense.
Paula, they thought, was much too young to have a baby. How could she take responsibility for a child when she couldn’t even take care of herself? She had no discipline, so how could she raise a child? Although Paula wanted to have the baby, she was secretly frightened. Emotionally, the situation overwhelmed her, and she yelled at her parents. Paula and her parents talked with priests, counselors at school, and family services.
They learned that teenage pregnancies were not that unusual. Nearly 822,000 unmarried teenagers became pregnant in the United States the same year that Paula did. A third ended up being aborted. Luis and Melba were told that those who were born were more likely to end up being abused and going to prison. After stormy and unresolved differences of opinion, Paula’s parents decided that the pregnancy had to be terminated. Paula was angry and resentful; she felt ashamed and guilty. The seeds had been planted that would grow into a lifetime of feeling inadequate and unworthy.
Luis and Melba were ashamed. In their eyes and those of the Catholic Church, the abortion was a mortal sin. Melba wept inconsolably and felt like a hole had been torn in her heart. They prayed for all of their souls, including the baby that would not be born, and asked for forgiveness.
Worried about their inability to control Paula, they concluded that New York offered too many temptations for young girls, especially when no one could watch them twenty-four hours a day. Louisa and Stephanie were well-behaved, but who knew what might lie ahead in this sin-filled city?
They thought of the more tranquil life in Colombia. Even with all of the drug-related crime, there weren’t as many opportunities to get in trouble as there were in New York. Especially where sex was concerned. Luis and Melba decided to send all three girls back to Colombia to live with their grandparents; they would have closer supervision there. Luis made arrangements for a private tutor so the girls wouldn’t be exposed to outside temptation at school.
Paula hated living in Colombia. She missed the excitement of the big city, her friends, and the freedom she had to move around. She had tasted forbidden fruit and liked it. She felt like a prisoner in her grandparents’ house. Colombia frightened her, too. The violence associated with the drug trade made the streets of Medellín dangerous. Paula begged her parents to let her return to New York. She promised she would behave. She wouldn’t run away from home, skip school, and would be the kind of daughter they wanted her to be.
When her parents didn’t relent after nine months, Paula raised the stakes. “If you don’t let me come back, I’m going to kill myself,” she told her parents.
Luis and Melba took the threat seriously. Paula and her sisters returned to New York where her parents had moved into a nicer, larger apartment in Queens. Paula’s stay in Colombia had done little to curb her appetite for sex and a life more adventurous than attending school.
“You must remember that school is very important,” they told her. “We cannot tell you how important it is. We want you to understand that.”
Paula had been “grounded” too long, and she could hardly wait to get back to having fun. Cutting classes, smoking marijuana, and having sex were too much fun to give up. But many of her old friends had moved on to other things, and Paula had to find new ones. She wandered the malls and the streets looking for adventure. Luis and Melba tried their best to steer her to a different path, but it didn’t lead anywhere Paula wanted to go.
Her parents loved Paula and tried to convince themselves that she was just going through the normal throes of adolescence. Maybe her behavior was normal for a girl her age. And then Paula met Chino.
Lissette Santiago was twelve years old, and living with an abusive man, when she gave birth to Chino. Not long after her son was born, Lissette’s fiery temper gave her the courage to walk away from the beatings and threats received from her boyfriend. She left Luis DeJesus when Chino was a toddler. She was a child raising a child in the Bronx, one of the toughest boroughs in New York.
Lissette believed that children deserved two parents. Because of that, she allowed Chino to have regular visits with his father, even though Luis was a heroin addict and had AIDS. Once, when Chino was seven years old, he came back from a visit with a bizarre story.
“Daddy’s friend was taking blood out of him,” he told his mother. “Daddy says it’s pain medicine for his back.”
Lissette knew that someone had been helping Luis mainline heroin, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to destroy Chino’s delusions about his father. Luis DeJesus died in prison of AIDS when Chino was twelve years old. Following Luis’s death, Lissette told Chino about his father’s drug abuse and AIDS. It marked a turning point in his life.
Chino at age thirteen was a swaggering tough guy that Lissette couldn’t control. He was aggressive, violent, and always spoiling for a fight. Lissette couldn’t discipline him because Chino would yell at her and become so violent that Lissette was afraid of getting hurt. She looked at the son she adored and saw that he was mean, morose, and violent.
Chino’s contemporaries were afraid of him. He picked fights, stole lunch money, and he shoplifted. He beat up other kids on a regular basis. She was accustomed to seeing him coming home covered with blood.
“I don’t know if it’s his blood or someone else’s,” Lissette said. “I never clean him up or look for cuts.”
Lissette knew Chino was out of control, but she felt helpless.
By this time Chino had two sisters, and Lissette was thankful that his violent outbursts didn’t include them. She attributed that to the closeness of the family.
“Chino has had a temper,” she said. “He came out just like me. But you don’t hit a woman. Never.”
Chino reacted to his mother’s attempts at discipline by calling her names and cursing her. She yelled right back. Go
d, he’s just like me, she thought. He got his rage from me. Like thunder and lightning, mother and son created a scary storm when they got into arguments.
At some point in the argument, the veins in Chino’s face would swell, his eyes would bulge, and he would get a blank look on his face. That meant danger for anyone who happened to be near him. It even frightened Lissette. She was terrified that her son, who was bigger and stronger than she was, would beat her up.
“Everybody’s out to get me!” Chino screamed at her. “Everything that happens to me is your fault because you brought me into this world.”
Chino screamed in frustration and stormed downstairs to Lissette’s car. He pounded on the hood and roof with his fists. He kicked the fenders and the side doors while he screamed obscenities. He stood on the hood and stomped on it, and then he kicked in the windshield before smashing the other windows with a club.
Chino fought on the streets almost daily. His rage at everything consumed him. He was paranoid about people and he hated society. He believed that nonwhites were nothing more than slaves, and that, if you wanted something, you had to take it. Lissette didn’t even ask what happened when Chino came home with bloody clothes. Something as innocent as that could cause him to explode.
Chino had not been diagnosed, but he exhibited all the characteristics of a “rageaholic,” someone who is addicted to anger. Anger is a primitive emotion that causes adrenaline to rush through our bodies and brains. It makes us stronger and more alert. In primitive times it gave us extra strength to fight for our lives or to run for our lives. Anger creates a “rush” that rageaholics find addictive. A rageaholic usually bottles up his real feelings, such as sadness, fear, shame, or unworthiness. When he reaches a saturation point, he snaps and goes into a fit of rage that endangers everyone around him.