Then my mom continued on with the realities and responsibilities of being a parent and that we’d better start thinking about the future. It was all good, sound advice and I honestly had every intention of following it to the letter. I was glad my mom didn’t get angry or excited. I guess it was the fact that she’d been in Chou’s situation when she was pregnant with me and she put herself in her shoes.
I walked her home and we agreed that she would wait until her brother-in-law came home to break the news. I told her that I would look for a job right away and start saving up money for when the time came that we’d live as a family. The carefree playboy days were obviously over, but I didn’t regret it for a second. I was happy beyond words. I didn’t need other women. I had Chou and that was more than enough for me. I don’t know if it was naïve on my part, but I produced these bright pictures in my mind of the three of us starting a life together there on the island. I’d work, she’d be home with the baby, keep house, and we’d live a normal life with all the simple pleasures. No more drugs. No more stickups. No running wild.
Whenever I put my mind to it, I never had a problem getting a job. I genuinely like working and at the end of every day of work, I do get a huge sense of satisfaction from accomplishing something. I guess it comes from the work ethic that my father instilled in us at a young age. We always had chores, and whenever my dad did things around the house, he made me help him and showed me the value of doing things for yourself. Whether it was hanging a screen door or working on the car, he had me at his elbow, schooling me on how to do things the right way. I never properly thanked him for that, but that ethic served me well on both sides of the law.
A few days later, I had a job running a forklift for Hawaiian Sun Products, a company that made fruit juices, preserves, and chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. In those few months after I landed in Hawaii, my dad would come home to find that his son had a job, had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, and was starting to drink every day. I think I was feeling the pressure of responsibility weighing on me, but I’d have a few beers every night after getting home and then a few more. I didn’t see any danger in that. I knew I could control it. I’d done it with all sorts of drugs, including the big monster of heroin.
On the day my dad came back from fleet duty, we left the house at 8:00 A.M. and drove down to Pearl Harbor. I was driving my mom and Jasmine to the arrival of the fleet. We went to a place assigned for the military families and we watched as they towed the carrier and the rest of the support fleet into port. There was an impressive ritual of disembarkation where the Navy thanks the Marines for their service on this latest deployment and the Marines reciprocate.
When that was over, all the sailors and Marines come down the ramp to their families. My mom and dad hugged for a long while and then when he saw me, the both of us started crying. My mom too. Then he pushed me away from him and realized that I was actually taller than him. “You’ve grown up, guy,” he said. Then he hugged me again. That was always his word for me. When things were going well between us, it was either “guy” or “kid.”
I helped collect all his gear and start driving us home. My mom tells me, “Go ahead and tell your dad what’s going on with you. He’s going to find out anyway, so he might as well hear it right from you.”
“Well, sir,” I started and gave him the capsule version of my situation. For my entire life, I always addressed my father as “sir.” We were just brought up that way. In fact, it wasn’t until decades later and after my final release from federal prison that he told me I could stop calling him sir.
Instead of addressing me directly, he asked my mom who Chou was and was her father in my father’s company. My mom tells him and it turns out that her brother-in-law was in the motor pool of my dad’s company. My dad thought about all this for a minute and then he sort of chuckled. He rubbed my head and said, “You need a haircut, kid.”
I told him I had a job but that I wanted to get married and join the Marines. He said we’d talk about it when we got home. When we got home, I called Chou and told her to come over to meet my father. Apparently, the atmosphere at her house was completely different. Her brother-in-law and her sister went completely ballistic. Her sister was telling her husband that Chou had been seeing an eighteen-year-old boy who had just gotten out of jail and that she’d been sneaking out of the house at night and basically painting a very bad picture of me and Chou. Chou said she was frightened and that she still wanted to run away. I told her we might not need to do that. She told me she’d call me later.
Around 11:00 P.M. that night, Chou called and said she was coming over. We sat in the living room talking about how differently our families had taken the news and what we were going to do, when my father came into the room. He must have heard us or something. I introduced them to each other. My dad was gracious and nice to her, but he said it was late for her to be up and sneaking around her family. He said all this in a very nice way. He also said that we had taken on the responsibility of bringing a life into the world and we should start acting like adults and not sneak around like kids. He offered to support whatever decision we made, but we’d have to do our part for the sake of the baby. He then asked Chou how old she was. She put her head down and said, “Sixteen.”
“You didn’t tell me she was underage,” he said to me.
I told him I didn’t know. “She told me she was eighteen and only told me the truth after she got pregnant.” He told me to walk her home and make sure she got there safely and we’d talk some more about it in the morning. As I walked her home, I told her that everything would be okay. My parents would help us take care of things. My parents, in fact, were ready to help us get our life started.
9
Baby
The next day, Chou told me her brother-in-law and sister wanted to talk to me. She met me outside her house and said, “Don’t say anything about the baby.” When we got inside, they were very formal and reserved. They sat me down and asked where I was from, what I did for a living, and what goals I had in life. This was some kind of warm-up for what was to come. Then they asked how Chou and I met and what my intentions were. Chou jumped in and answered for me. Then they asked how old I was. I told them. “You know Chou is only sixteen, right?” I said I knew that now but I didn’t know it at first. They asked what we intended to do for the future. We both told them that we were in love and wanted to take our relationship as far as it would go. They said that we were too young to be making these kinds of decisions that would affect the rest of our lives. Besides, we’d only known each other a few months and it was way too soon to be making life decisions. Finally they said Chou and I could continue seeing each other as long as we respected the rules of the house and didn’t go sneaking off in the middle of the night. They wanted everything between us open and aboveboard. That was fine with us. But we never told them about the pregnancy. And that knowledge became like a cloud over us.
But I still knew, no matter what happened, that I was going to take care of her and the baby and I was committed to forging a normal life for the three of us. Over the next few weeks, I took her regularly to the clinic for checkups and prenatal care. I continued working at the warehouse and trying to save every nickel I could for our future. But a few weeks later, I got a call at work from Chou. She was crying and almost hysterical. Her sister had found some of the vitamins and literature that the clinic had given Chou on teenage pregnancy and how to help ensure a healthy delivery. They had gone ballistic again and were now insisting that Chou should get an abortion. I told my supervisor that I had a family emergency and had to go home.
By the time I got there, all hell had broken loose. Chou’s sister was at my house yelling at my mom. She said she was going to call the police and have me charged with statutory rape. My mom told her that Chou had lied about her age and at this point, there was no use in assigning blame. Chou and I were both responsible for this situation and we should all start thi
nking about what’s best for the baby and its future. By this time, my father and Chou’s brother-in-law had come home. We were all in the house and Chou and I sat there holding hands while the adults went back and forth on what should happen next. Her sister said that Chou was going to get an abortion and that she was going to college and entering a profession. She wasn’t going to waste her life having a baby at that age and miss out on all the opportunities that a smart sixteen-year-old was entitled to. I told them that I wanted to join the Marines and marry Chou. But her family wasn’t listening to me. My parents’ priority was the baby. They wanted to make sure that the baby would be taken care of. Her family didn’t give a crap about the baby. They wanted her to abort. Period.
For some reason, her family decided that from now on, we couldn’t see each other unless it was in the presence of one of our family members. No more going out on dates or picnics. I was working every day, so the only time I could see her was at night in her living room with either her sister or brother-in-law present. The circumstances didn’t matter to me. I just wanted to be with her. Chou was so petite that after only a few months she started showing a belly. Sometimes we’d be at my house under “parental supervision.” She still wanted to run away, but I told her that I wasn’t making enough money to do that and take proper care of her. We’d go to my room for some alone time and we’d lie there just holding each other and I’d talk to the baby. I never wanted anything more in my entire life than that baby. We were still crazy about each other and we both wanted the baby.
It was in January of that year, 1981, that I was at work and got another devastating phone call. It was Chou. She was crying so hard that I could barely understand what she was saying. She said that she had started bleeding and they had taken her to the hospital. The doctors had decided to induce labor because it was the best chance they had of saving the baby and making sure that Chou would be all right.
I left work around three thirty in the afternoon and I had to take two buses to get to the hospital. An hour and a half later I arrived to find her sister and brother-in-law in the hall outside her room. They said I could go in and see her. The sight of her tiny little frame in that hospital bed made me cry. She was pale and her lips were chapped and she was barely coherent. I hugged her and asked how she was. She said she was in pain but that she’d be okay soon. Then we both started crying. She told me we should have run away together and gotten away from her family. A few minutes later she fell asleep and the doctor came in and told me I had to leave.
I didn’t want to leave, but I couldn’t stand being around her family, who I knew were blaming me for everything. Around seven that night I got a call at home from Chou. She was crying again and the only thing she could say over and over again was, “The baby is gone. The baby is gone.” I wanted to use the car to see her, but my dad wouldn’t let me have it. He said there was nothing I could do right now and the best thing would be to wait until she got home the next day. They were going to release her because there hadn’t been any complications to keep her there. Chou told me to stay home because they’d given her painkillers and she was about to sleep.
I told my parents that the baby was gone and they were almost as devastated as I was. My mom cried and my dad did what he could to make me feel better. I was falling apart. I was angry and heartbroken. I didn’t know how to deal with this. It was tearing me apart. I had my heart set on starting our family. And now it was all yanked away from me.
The next day after work, I went to the mall and bought flowers and a teddy bear for Chou. When I got home I called her, but her sister said she was asleep. I didn’t want to hear that. I went over there anyway. When I got to the door, her brother-in-law stood in my way as if to keep me from going in. I didn’t have to say anything to him. He took one look at my face and said I could go in but only for a minute.
She wasn’t asleep at all. She was in bed crying. I held her for a long time. Then she said, “When you came to see me in the hospital holding my hand, the baby was already coming out of me. I didn’t want to tell you. So I pretended to go to sleep. When you left, I went into the bathroom like they told me to do and the baby was hanging down between my knees. I could see the little hands and feet.” Then she burst into hysterical crying. And she says over and over again, “If only I hadn’t seen the baby. If only I hadn’t seen the baby.”
It was a boy.
I lay in her bed that night holding her and the both of us crying and sobbing. I could sense even through her tears that something had changed in her. Something I’d never be able to name or understand. I wanted to lash out. I wanted to hurt something or someone. But who do I blame? Me? Her? I blamed God for taking my son and I swore that I would pay him back. Chou didn’t want me to leave, so we lay there until we fell asleep. Later that night her sister came in and woke me up. She said it was time for me to go home.
When I got home, my parents were still up waiting for me. They both gave me a hug and told me to go get some sleep. “Things will look better in the morning,” they told me. They weren’t better the next morning or any time after that.
Chou started to withdraw from me and it looked like she was withdrawing from the rest of the world as well. Whenever I tried to see her, she broke into tears. I tried to be as gentle as possible with her, but she refused any sort of attention from me. She wouldn’t let me touch her, physically or in any other way.
She went back to high school and I continued to work at the warehouse, but we started drifting apart. She rarely answered her phone. And she never seemed to be around when I knocked on her door.
I began making friends at work and started spending time with other people I met off base. My mom had a group of friends she played Bingo with and when they would go camping, they invited me along. And through them I met even more people. It was inevitable that Chou and I would see each other on the street, but it was no longer the same sweet, innocent Chou that I knew. She seemed detached and almost robotic in the way she moved and talked. I tried a few times to talk to her about what had happened and see if there was some way of getting back together, but she cut short the conversations with excuses that she had to go somewhere or had chores to do. We would never be able to get past what had happened. It was over and I don’t think I ever fully recovered from it.
After a few weeks I met Amanda, a California girl who was going to college in Hawaii. She worked at Baskin-Robbins in the afternoon and we took the same bus to go home. Soon after we started dating, she asked me if I wanted to move in with her. She was living with two other people in Honolulu, which was close to the university. I didn’t really feel any strong impulse to move in with her, but living almost next door to Chou was becoming harder and harder for me. It was an excuse to get out of that neighborhood and try to get my life restarted. The relationship with my parents was better than it had ever been and I didn’t want that to end, but I felt I had to get out of there or I’d drive myself half-crazy every time I saw Chou’s house and thought of the son that I lost. I was angry all the time and maybe the change of housing and some new people in my life would help put the whole episode out of my mind.
Unlike Chou, Amanda was more of a party girl. After work and school, we’d spend the evening either tangled up in lust or cruising the beaches drinking or getting high on whatever we could get our hands on. She knew a lot of the locals and I had a lot of friends from work, so there were always people around for us to party with. Some of the guys I knew from work had access to a lot of marijuana, this being Hawaii and the home of the fabled Maui Wowie. She introduced me to a guy named CJ. He was half-black and half-Hawaiian and he had a connection for both LSD and cocaine. Whenever we could afford it, we’d track down CJ and score.
As it turned out, CJ and I got to be really good friends. And it wasn’t long after I met him that he asked me if I wanted to help him sell dope on the beach. Just like in San Diego when I was younger, the tourists were the prime market for what w
e were selling. We sold it at the beach and at the International Market in Waikiki. Combined with my connection for marijuana, we became a one-stop retail outlet for anything that a tourist looking to get high could possibly want—acid, coke, bud, you name it, we had it, and in large quantities. It wasn’t long before we were making $700 a day each. That paid a lot better than pushing a forklift around a warehouse.
I quit my job at the warehouse and went full-time into dealing drugs. Amanda and I bought a VW Karmann Ghia and she pretty much gave up going to classes. When we weren’t on the job selling drugs, we were high. Even though I no longer worked at the warehouse, I made sure to stay in touch with Gilbert and Chris, the two guys at work who had the major marijuana connection.
During the day, CJ and I would split up and work the beaches and the markets. At night we’d hit the nightclubs. There was a punk club called the 3D, a disco called the Red Lion, the Jazz Cellar (another disco), and then there was the Enlisted Men’s Club at the Army base. I stayed away from the Marine clubs. After a few weeks of regular night calls at these places, the bouncers got to know me. All I had to do was give them a little payoff and they’d let me in. They’d also let me know if there was anyone around that looked like they could be a narc.
Naturally, when you’re in a club and you’ve got a lot of dope, you become a very popular guy. And I was. I was meeting and banging all sorts of girls from everywhere in the world. White girls, black girls, foreigners and mainlanders, and people from Europe. I remember spending one memorable night with an amazing blonde from Sweden in a hot tub on the roof of her hotel, frying our brains out on acid and screwing like rabbits until the sun came up. I was back in paradise. I’m still eighteen at this time and I’m making more money than my father, having all kinds of sex with beautiful women, and not a care in the world except making sure the drug supply kept flowing. By this time, Amanda was beginning to complain that I wasn’t spending enough time with her, but I told her we weren’t married and we weren’t attached at the hip. We were just out to have a good time and it was going to stay that way.
Confessions of a Cartel Hit Man Page 8