Confessions of a Cartel Hit Man

by Martin Corona

  In a few minutes, they had cleared the yard and sent everybody back to their dorm. What had happened was that the two guys had a beef on the outside and they couldn’t get it worked out. So the Big Homies let them settle it. One guy caught the other guy slipping and stabbed him with a shank. The yard did get locked down, but it was such a minor event in the course of prison life at that time that lockdown only lasted until after lunch.

  By that time, Mando had finished his visit and I was waiting for him to give him back his property. He breaks off some of the dope I was holding for him, we got high, and then Mando decided to go pay his respects to Benny. He asked me to go with him. When we went to see Benny, Benny said to Mando, “Your little homie handled himself like a champ this morning. He didn’t panic or anything.” Mando put his arm around me and said to Benny, “Yeah, this little homie has been around and he’s got nuts.” That blew my head up more than anything I could remember to that time. After that, I was invited to play dominoes with Benny and Mando.

  A little while later, I was working out with Georgie Castaneda from Vista. Mando was on another visit and some guys came up to us and said, “I think your homeboys are going to get into it with the tintos [blacks] over by the canteen.” So Georgie and me shoot over to the canteen, and one of the San Diego homeboys, Chivo from Imperial Beach who was on crutches because he broke his leg in a soccer game, is arguing with this black guy. The cause of the argument was that the black guy had cut in line in front of him at the store. As soon as we get there, the two of them start fighting and within seconds every Hispanic in the yard is beating on every black they can get their hands on. Naturally, the gun tower fires a round into the ground. With that first shot, everyone standing is down on the ground, facedown and laying still. The second shot would not be fired into the ground but into whoever might still be fighting.

  I landed next to this black guy who was still yelling, talking shit, and spitting at me. I got up and started beating on him and people are yelling at me to “Get down. Get down.” But I was blind with rage and I paid no attention to them. Then other people get up off the ground and start fighting again all over the yard. But oddly enough, no further shots were fired from the gun towers.

  The COs finally swarmed the yard and I found myself held down by three of them and my hands cuffed behind me. I was taken to the Program Office, where they had eight small cages and they put me in one of them. They put Chivo in a cage next to me and they put some black guys in some of the other cages. The guys on visits were walking back to their dorms and Mando sees me in the cage. “What happened?” he asked. I told him what I could get out. And laughing, he said, “See, little homie. I can’t take you nowhere without you getting in trouble.” Then he said, “You’re missing out. I hit it big-time.” Meaning that the person that visited him just smuggled in a huge stash of dope.

  We got sent back to Central and placed in Palm Hall, which is the hole for Chino. They put us on the third tier on the East Side. As soon as we arrived, a huge black guy covered with tattoos came over to me and Chivo.

  “Where you fools from and why you back here?” he asked.

  I looked at Chivo, and Chivo told him, “We’re from San Diego. Is there any raza [Hispanics] here?”

  The black guy laughs and says, “I am raza, fool. They call me Ziggy from Wilmas [Wilmington, a city in LA County]. And this is my homeboy Farmer.” This other giant Mexican guy appears. Wilmas is a Hispanic gang and I’d never come across a black Sureno. This was a revelation.

  Chivo and I introduce ourselves and tell him what happened. They tell us that they’re the tier tenders and for us not to worry. We would be in good company. They went on to say that the Big Homie, Wino from La Rana, is downstairs from us. La Rana is a gang. The brothers are all Mexican Mafia members and run all the drugs in the San Pedro, Wilmington, and Torrance areas of Los Angeles. Over the course of their criminal careers, they became nearly legendary for their ability to maintain a high level of control on the streets and in the prison system. Having a big name dropped like that on me and Chivo was like saying that John Dillinger and Al Capone were living downstairs from us.

  The black further said that when we went to classification committee, we should tell them that we wanted to be released into the Southern Yard. He also said that when the COs gave us our copies of our write-ups (the specifics of our violations), we should send the copies to Wino.

  When we got our copies we dutifully obeyed and sent them to Wino. I knew from experience that the COs always embellish the write-ups to make the inmates look worse than their actions actually warrant and put them in more trouble than they actually deserve. So it was no surprise that they accused me and Chivo of “inciting a riot” with the blacks and that we refused to comply and get down after several warning shots from the tower.

  If there had been more than one warning shot, I never heard it. I guess I was too busy fighting. By the time Chivo and I got back to the yard, we were welcomed back as heroes. We conducted ourselves like warriors and followed the Mexican Mafia orders to stand up for our own kind against the blacks or anyone else that attacked a Sureno.

  When my ninety days were up, they sent me back to the San Diego County Jail. I was expecting to be put on adult probation and leave the jail that day or very soon afterward. But I saw that the judge was carefully reading my observation report and the look on his face wasn’t promising for me. When he finished reading, he looked at me and said, “Well, I guess you’ve found a new home.” He sentenced me to sixteen months in state prison. This was it. I was finally in big-boy prison and doing big-boy time.

  I spent another month in San Diego County Jail and then was sent back to Chino. Being that I had already gone through the observation and screening process in Chino, my case was already done and I was designated to go to Soledad State Prison in Central California. Soledad is where George Jackson was housed and from where he wrote his revolutionary book Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson. Jackson was a Marxist, a member of the Black Panthers, and cofounder of the Black Guerilla Family (BGF) prison gang. The BGF is still in existence as a prison gang and is the Mexican Mafia’s primary antagonist within the California prison system.

  When I arrived in Soledad in 1983, Soledad was the place where Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy’s assassin, was housed. Also in residence was Gregory Powell, the man who killed an LAPD officer (Ian Campbell) in the infamous Onion Field murder case.

  On the bus ride from San Diego to Soledad, we stopped in Vacaville State Prison to pick up some passengers and drop others off. They had me in a cage by myself all the way up front. That was because when I went back to Palm Hall from San Diego County Jail, I was still sentenced to solitary confinement from the “riot” in the yard that I had supposedly started. So being in the cage was like being in solitary on the bus. They also added points to my record. And that meant that instead of going into a drug rehab program, I was endorsed to Soledad and into maximum security housing.

  So while I’m sitting in the cage, in comes my homeboy Eric Flores getting on the bus at Vacaville. “Hey, Big E. What’s up, homie?” “Nite Owl,” he says. “What’s up, baby boy?” He found a seat close by and we start exchanging gossip. Where am I going? Where have I been? When I told him I was going to Soledad, he says, “Me too.” We agree that we’d try to cell up together when we got there. Eric and I went back a long way. He was older than me and he helped me out when I was a youngster running around in the streets in Oceanside. We were so close that one time he and his girlfriend, Liz, had wanted to adopt me or at least make them my legal guardians. I lived with him for six months before I was busted for the burglaries that sent me to YA the first time.

  When we got to Soledad Central, they put us both in O wing for orientation. They put us in the same cell and we both settled down and started catching up on each other’s recent history. He asked me about Mando and I told him that Mando had landed in a drug reha
b program at another prison.

  Around 6:30 P.M., the CO comes to the cell and asks us if we want a shower. We both do but neither of us have shower shoes. We were in transport and all we had were the prison-issued boots. The thing is, you don’t want to go into a prison shower without some kind of footwear. Shower shoes are a must because the showers aren’t all that sanitary and you can pick up all sorts of diseases if you go in there with bare feet. Since we didn’t have shower shoes, Eric and I decided to wear our boots into the shower. We looked sort of ridiculous and we knew it and were laughing about it.

  All of a sudden we both clam up and get real serious. There were three other guys in the shower with us. They were all Mexicans and their tattoos identified them as Nortenos. This is the Northern California Hispanic prison gang—the eternal enemies of the Surenos. The Mexican Mafia (Surenos) and the Nuestra Familia (Nortenos) have been feuding since the early 1970s. Lots and lots of blood has been spilled by both parties, and to this day, it hasn’t stopped. It’s an eternal war that has lasted close to fifty years with no indication of it ever stopping.

  The Nortenos are tensely checking us out. Eric and I are outnumbered and we’re mentally getting ourselves ready to fight for our lives. We can feel the hatred pouring out of those guys. Then one of them calls out, “Hey. Nite Owl. Is that you?” I look hard at the dude. Then I recognize him. “Yeah, Rock,” I said. “It’s me.” I told Eric to be cool. Rock (his real name was Pascual) turns and talks to his guys very quietly. They look at us as he’s talking. And then they turn away and continue on taking their showers. Then Pascual yells over and says, “Nite Owl. It’s all good. We’re just gonna take a shower and pretend that this never happened, okay?” I told him it was okay and that it was good to see him again.

  We showered in peace and went back to our cell. Eric is dying to know. “What the hell was that all about?” I told him that Pascual and I were on the same fire team when were at the Mount Bullion Fire Camp in Youth Authority. I told him we’d become friends being on the same team and that we got along really well. I knew that if the situation was reversed that I would do the same thing. Give the guy a pass. But in either case, it was dangerous for him and it would have been dangerous for me. Eric didn’t have to explain it, although he did. “The dude’s a Norteno, little homie. Whatever friendship you had was cool in YA, but here in the joint, we’re at war. We got a pass this time. But from now on, we have to be on our game.” Eric and I both knew that we were outnumbered and probably they could have taken us apart. But the code says that you neither ask for nor give a pass. Ultimately, Eric and I would have rather taken our lumps from these guys than have the Big Homies find out that we didn’t charge in to fight those guys even if we were outnumbered and had our asses handed to us.

  We only stayed in O wing one more day. After that, I was transferred to B wing and Eric went to G wing. I was put in a cell with a guy from Maravilla (a street gang from Los Angeles) named Sniper. He was doing a lot of time and he’d already been at Soledad a number of years. When I went to the dayroom for the first time, I ran into a lot of Surenos from LA that I’d met throughout my career. They told me there were a lot of homeboys from San Diego but they were in other wings. Then I heard my name called out. I look over and it’s this giant of a guy holding a broom and smiling a mile wide. “Hey, Nite Owl. Is that you?” It was my cousin Manuel Zarate. He was huge and built like a truck. Although I didn’t know him as well as I did his brother Peter or his sister Patsy, who actually used to babysit me when I was a kid, Manuel was a sort of legendary figure on the streets because of his size and the amount of heart he had for the gang. He had a great reputation in the prison system as well. He had a deep, booming voice. So big that they called him Foghorn. So when he called out to me, everybody in the dayroom looked our way. I walked up to him to shake his hand and he throws me a huge hug.

  “Come here, cabron,” he says. “We’re family, fool.”

  He asked me where I was living and I showed him. He looked around the cell and saw that I didn’t have anything in the way of luxury or convenience. “I’m working right now so I can’t bring you anything. But I’m gonna move you to my wing. I have a pad for you. In fact, you know him. Gallo from Encanto.”

  I couldn’t believe it. It was David “Gallo” Dominguez. The guy that I escaped Rancho Del Campo with years ago. And I’d be celling with him. Manuel goes into my cell with me and says, “Here.” He pulls something out of his pocket and hands it to me. “Sell some for your canteen items and smoke the rest of it with your little buddies out there. I’ll be back later to check up on you and you should be down in my wing by tomorrow.” Then he tells some of the Surenos within earshot in the dayroom, “You fools keep him out of trouble. This is my little Primo and if he gets in any wrecks while he’s here, it’s your ass.” They took this good-naturedly but I wondered how genuinely afraid they were when they said, “Don’t trip. We got him.” He gave me a big hug and he said, “I promised Grandma Lupe I would keep you out of trouble, so don’t fuck up.” I told him I came up with big Eric and he said he knew. I grew up with the Moreno family.

  My Big Homie, Chapo Moreno, was a legend in the gangster world. He was killed by an off-duty cop from Arizona. Chapo and my homegirls Lucy and Vera were coming back from Brawley, California, in the late 1970s. They were hitchhiking and they got picked up by this off-duty cop. But they didn’t know he was a cop. During the ride, this cop kept hitting on Vera, who was Chapo’s girlfriend. This guy is making a real pest of himself until Chapo got good and tired of it. He had the guy pull over on some pretext or other and when they got out, Chapo grabbed the guy and threw him into the trunk of the car. They drive back to the hood and they stopped under a freeway overpass. Chapo yells at the guy through the closed hood, “Thanks for the ride.” Lucy felt bad leaving him there, so she opens the trunk and the guy apparently had a gun back there in the trunk. As soon as the trunk lid goes up, the guy shoots Lucy directly in the head and kills her. Then he turns to Chapo and unloads the rest of the ammo into him. He then turns to shoot Vera, but the gun is empty. So he cuffs her and waves down a bus. He tells the driver that he’s an off-duty cop who has been kidnapped and just shot his kidnappers. Chapo died in Vera’s arms and she was never the same after that.

  The cop walked away from it all scot-free and never even saw the inside of a courtroom or a jail cell. Chapo’s murder left Jessie Moreno with a bitter heart and he became this beast in the neighborhood. He spent the rest of his life going in and out of jail. Later on, he was indicted in a federal case and was sent to federal prison, where the EME made him a brother. Then one day, Jessie just retired because he didn’t want to spend whatever time he had left with hatred in his heart and constantly on the warpath against enemies real or imagined. To my way of thinking, he’d put enough work into the EME as any three or four brothers put together.

  After my cousin Manuel leaves, I call Sniper over and show him the weed. It was about five caps. A cap is the cover of a ChapStick tube and in the joint we use the cap as the universal measure for dope. Sort of our own system of weights and measures. Back in my day, a cap of weed would buy you a whole carton of cigarettes. Sniper says he’ll ask around to see who wants some. In the meantime, we roll a joint and smoke it. After that, I made some coffee and watched some TV while Sniper went out looking for buyers. After all was said and done, we got a can of Bugler tobacco; a bunch of hygiene stuff like deodorant, soap, shampoo, hair pomade; Top Ramen noodles, chips, soda, and a can of tuna fish. And I still had enough left over to smoke with some of the Surenos in the dayroom and a whole joint for me and Sniper to smoke in our cell later.

  After dinner, Manuel came by and he’s got Jessie Moreno with him. Jessie and I hug for a long time and he says, “I knew your ass was gonna end up here.” Jessie starts talking about the old days and he told Manuel the story about him and his old lady picking me up on the streets where I was living and putting me in his car. They took me
somewhere and parked. He got out and ten minutes later he came back and stuffed a huge wad of money in my hand. “Don’t say nothing,” he told me. I don’t know where he got the money, but I found out later that a bank had been robbed in that neighborhood. I wasn’t about to question the Big Homie. I was only a fourteen-year-old kid. We went on talking about ancient history in the varrio and then Manuel asked me if I sold that stuff. I told him I did and bought a bunch of canteen stuff with it. Then Manuel hands me another cap and says, “Don’t be giving these bums a free ride.” He meant the camaradas, the guys who weren’t made EME members but were basically their eyes, ears, and fists. Then he asked me if I had called our grandmother yet. I told him I hadn’t. He said tomorrow we’d go to the yard and make sure that I called her. They both gave me a big hug and left. This was fairly typical in prison. Our guys, the Surenos and especially Surenos who were family members, looked out for each other. If we’d hadn’t been in prison, this was the sort of conversation anyone would be having on the outside. They just came by to make sure I was squared away, that I had toilet articles for my health, and that I stayed in touch with family.

  The odd thing is that I was never scared going into prison. There are countless books and movies about how terrifying prison is and how people are constantly in danger and so on. The truth is that prison is full of killers, misfits, and dangerous people and shit was always jumping off, but I never remembered being scared. To me, it was more exciting than it was scary. Maybe the big difference is that I literally had nothing to lose. I had no children, no girlfriend of any consequence, and I’d been on my own since I was thirteen. I knew I was a small fish in a big ocean and if I wanted to survive, I’d have to learn to swim with the sharks. Killer sharks.