《Hostages of Days Long Past: The Ghost of a Family》 Chapter 1: Juvenile Hell Riding his bike home in the pleasant night air, Ishmael Phillips didnt know this was the last moment of peace his life would ever know. He was feeling a natural high in the warm evening. Having just come home from playing video games for the weekend with his old foster brother Ricky. The streets were empty except for cars way off turning at the inner section. He knows home is always chaotic, violent. His mother had such a monstrous hostility. She always was either sullen and crying, off somewhere else chasing some sleazy boyfriend or at home making his life a living hell. She would find plates in the sink and decide not to make food all week, or step on a lego and sell all his hand me down early marvel comics to the pawn shop. Today was a nightmare his young mind had no way of grasping. Laying his bike down on the grass and coming in the front door he was surprised to see peace for once. So many times he came home to punches, kicked in tv tube, bullet holes in the door or even a fire on the back porch because she was mad about a puppy they had for about a week that disappeared in one of her conniption fits. A lot of turmoil and grief circulates above her schitzophrenia... drug ridden brain. Any moment of joy can be snatched away in an instant because she is in a rage about some invented transgression. Sometimes its funny to see your mother stomp around snarling like a toddler having a tantrum, but mostly its like having a festering wound on your soul. Inside the living room the tv was static. The VCR and rabbit ears were knocked off the top knocking on the tv in the breeze from the broken side window. Feeling some instinctive pause. He feels like running back the way he came and pleading his way into his aunties house, or the gang hideout on the corner, or to sleep on the roof of the school as he had done so many times he has a blanket and pillow stashed in an air duct. Deeper in the house he hears some strange gasping and meat packing sounds. He couldnt tell if this was sexual, which his mother had no shame about having rough sex with the doors and windows wide open. But none of the smells and subtle hints of lovemaking were here. He imagined what if his mother was in trouble and he could save her and be the hero. Looking in the bathroom there was a knife in the sink, washed sloppily, leaving a ring of coagulated blood around the drain. His bedroom looked ransacked. This was no new thing. His mother and her cast of revolving lovers often came in his room searching for valuables to trade for a night of drinking or white stuff to snort during weekends of screaming and domestic violence. His bed was upside down, thrown diagonally into the closet where the door was smashed and his younger brother Israels blank eyes stared from within. He wanted to ask what was going on, but the big tear filled eyes just stared off like a Vietnam vets thousand yard stare, retreating into the closet and closing the door. Just then he hears his mother talking somewhere else in the house. Looking into his mothers bedroom, he sees a body. A mixed man with a professional type haircut you see on only cops and marine recruiters lays halfway off the bed. He sees a neatly folded sheriffs uniform on top of the television. The man had dozens of stab wounds piercing his white tank top, a puffy brown stain in the back of his white boxer shorts. Beside the body is a briefcase full of polaroid pictures, syringes and black film containers full of what he knows to be drugs. A slamming cabinet startles him. He feels small and tries to call out with a little voice that catches in his throat. This family is like a emotional marathon. He never gets a full nights sleep from screams of rage or booming music from all night doper parties. Seeing an angry silhouette pass from the kitchen. He crouches and walks back into his room to pack up clothes for him and his brother to wait out the violence somewhere else. Hearing a sound from behind that makes his skin crawl. His mother was glaring in the window from the back porch. Her eyes are bloodshot and hateful. She smokes a cigarette and doesnt say a word. Her hands are shaking and her expensive pressed on nails are chipped and bloody. He feels a little relieved knowing it was her in the house and not some unknown attacker going room to room to shoot them in the back of the head over some drug debt. As he urinates, in emotional shock he rocks back and forth. He doesnt know why but streams of tears come from his eyes. His throat has a lump and his heart feels cold, like a giant weight is pressing down on him and stifling his breathing. He is in his own little world and is slapped back to reality when his mothers gnarled hand seizes the bathroom curtain and says yes he is here what is he wearing? let me check. Her face appears in the crack in the screen window, she doesnt make eye contact and looks down at his outfit. He has a pale blue Thundarr the Barbarian T-shirt, burgundy corduroy shorts and yellow leather pumas. She sounds like she is on the phone with 911. In the rare fake surgery tone his mother only talks with police, school administrators and social workers. He hears her setting him up, yes he is still here, I dont see the knife. He must have hid it He doesnt know the profound tragedy of these words. He had walked into an ambush. His mother had just altered their lives forever. Hearing several cars pull up with no sirens. Squaks of radios and hurried boots filing in the front door. His mother steps forward with the avocado colored rotary phone pressed against her chest. She mouths, Im sorry Just as towering white men from the police gang unit, pummel him into unconsciousness with a harsh tackle and flashlight cracking the back of his skull. When he awakens it is in a brightly lit white room with only a table and some dark yellow fiberglass chairs with metal legs. He stands up and looks in the large mirror thats on one wall, and on the other side a sees an office room with one black officer with heavy black circles around his eyes that looks like a hulking corpse. Seeing him, he tries to smile but the man has a cold glare then slaps the one way glass with a heavy hand. Rising the black officer walks out of the room and soon 2 detectives come in one with a hawkish that IRS type smile. The other with a menacing vibe, pushing him against the wall so hard he almost loses consciousness. Smelling onions and tunafish in this big Tom Bunyon motherfuckers village people cop mustache. The detective turns his hat around backwards and sits in the chair the wrong way like an actor from an anti drug commercial. Why did you do it? Ishmael feels a knot in his throat and doesnt answer. Again another heavy slap on the table. He feels a cold flash in his stomach like being on a roller coaster for the first time. I am officer Telez, narcotics. This is Bartlebee from Juvenile Homicide Investigations. The Sheriffs Deputy you killed is Hotchkiss from South West Division. You are lucky this isnt their jurisdiction. They are itching to get their hands on you. There are 6 car loads of them in the lobby yelling for your blood. If you dont help us out I will let them interrogate you. Why did you do it? Ishmael feels like he forgot how to speak English. His head is spinning and everything feels overwhelming. He cant even hear the cops. They sound like they are talking in underground tunnel. He tries to think of who can save him. He doesnt have any one. He has some teachers who like him but not their telephone numbers. His father has been on deathrow since he was in first grade. He hears the cops say like father like son. His dad was involved in a take over robbery at a asian grocery where his uncle Elmer the Vietnam vet worked. He has a grandma back in Mississippi who was on her deathbed from emphazima and lung cancer. There is some family of his Dads side they dont talk to that lives here in LA but he has only heard rumors about some old neighborhood feud that divided the family. He wonders what could have been if his Dad didnt fuck up all their lives with a well publicized murder all over the news. Being involved in gangs and marrying the worst, most toxic woman he could find. His mother Jinx. Maybe he could have grown up in suburbia, had a bike ramp or studied to become an Astronaut or a famous Comics artist. Down where art class was a spray can in the creek, music class was a boom box on the roof of the defunded public arts school that sits burned down and boarded up. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. This isnt the first time he has been here. He stole a bike in elementary and nothing happened besides a meeting with a social worker. He got busted again for breaking into a pool and getting cut up on barbed wire. While he was swimming another kid took a hammer and broke all the drinking fountains, windows and when caught threw him under the bus for everything. This is when his mom decided to give him up to the court, mostly because she wanted to rent his room out to her drug dealer. After a year and a half in group homes and camp. He was allowed back home. 7 months back at home was liberating in the sense he didnt have old white ladies taking away his comic book art or skateboard, making him do chores and accusing the only black kid for every thing missing. But his moms form of parenting was negligent. She let the kids police them selves, if they didnt do their homework she didnt care. His mind circling on what he should say. The cops are all done, they have been filling out paperwork and passes him a pen to sign the confession they just fabricated. He doesnt have the presence of mind to refuse. Signing his future away, he is given a sandwich and papercup of juice before being driven to Juvenile Hall where by 3am he is making a bed for the first time in years and forgetting how the sheets fit. He wakes up to bucket of black water being thrown on his face by the trustee from a dirty mop bucket. Laughter from all the bunks around him in the now stark daylight of the juvenile dorm. He sees mean smiles full of challenge, shouts of disrespect and people planning who will test his manhood first in the endless neighborhood disputes of Juvenile Hall. This place is called Los Padrinos, a facility for minors to wait in while being ferried back and forth to court while their case his resolved. He gets a note from his uncle Elmer that his mother isnt allowed to visit because she is a witness for the prosecution and that the rest of the family is too busy to come either but when things cool down he will send some food and magazines. He never hears from Elmer again which isnt unusual. Elmer is kind of allergic to family or any thing else besides watching westerns and drinking him self to sleep in a chair on his porch. A week later he gets pulled out from his unit for an interview with the public defender. She is a mousy latino lady who looks nervous and bites her nails. She is pretty but rarely makes eye contact and when he asks about his case she says maybe you shouldnt have killed a cop, i dont think i can help you other than saying you are too young for the death penalty and they cant give you life but you should get comfortable because at minimum you are going to be here until you are 23. He tries to protest but she shushes him to read some mandatory legal jargon, says she will know more at court and leaves. At court she isnt there and a harsh man from juvenile probation says You are lucky i dont break every bone in your body Give me a reason to beat you to death! Cop killer! All the staff here have reputations for enjoying twisting arms behind your back until they dislocated, breaking jaws and knocking out teeth. His third day in he saw a kid who didnt speak english get his face slammed against a wall until he went into convulsions. Ishmael is kind of in auto pilot. Even when hearing important bits of info his brain is kind of blank. He doesnt know what to make of all this. He just wants to be left alone and die in some dark corner. His upbringing left him in a familiar emotional dark place from rejection, abuse and trauma. Several times walking down stairs his feet were kicked out from under him by the staff, who thought this was funny. He also smelled feces and tobacco chew spit in his food tray more than once so he only drinks the unopened milk carton and eats the apples and orange if he can wash them off in the bathroom. His mind spirals between two polarities of frustration in blinding rage when alone in the quiet room where they put you when upset. Every time he gets escorted to a unit, the staff open the door by slamming his head into it. He doesnt fight back which makes them more mad so they start screaming like he tried to run to justify the assault. Twisting his arm until it breaks and throwing him into the quiet room. A blank space to chip your teeth on bullet proof glass windows with wire mesh, solid walls where bored and mean spirited guards encourage you to break your own fists on metal doors. His other more profound emotion is loss. As if a black and blue blanket of absence of all love and light needed by a human being is swept into the black sky in the lonely hours of the night. Feeling truly alone and with out hope he leans into the respect he gets for fighting other juvenile delinquents. He isnt from a gang, but his dad was and where you live is enough to make enemies in here. They do let you have tapes, but the Walkmans get broken down into tattoo guns in short order. His dad started the Ghost Town Crips, which are enemies with the Sepulveda Santa Muerte, Mexican gang and the Graveyard Gangster Bloods was the other black gang in their unincorporated western fringe of Los Angeles. The Ghetto by the Sea. In here its all enemies, nobody he went to school with is in here. Its a mix of the worst of the worst and because he is in for murder he is housed with all killers who are full grown. Ishmael isnt even in High School yet so he is the punching bag. He picks up boxing from a cell mate he has who has a little training. Before the end of the year he has a growth spurt and goes from under 5 to 6.2 by the next Christmas. There is always a new challenger. He gets the nickname Mail Man. It was Nov 1982 the night his mother framed him, by June 84 he was in the Youth Authority, on a chilly morning in February 1993 he is released not from good behavior but because they cant keep him past 24. He was getting released from Preston. That was the San Quentin of juvenile facilities. It was situated in a marshy little farm town south of Sacramento. He was far from home and he didnt even have a quarter to make a call. He sees all the other wards getting kisses and hugs from family and amorous girlfriends. The cars roll out and he starts to walk in the direction the cars had left in. This little town called ione with an i was pretty. A lot of old trees and falling town houses that reminded him of the south or the movie swamp thing. Just as he starts walking into the blazing westerly sun he hears someone calling his name. He looks back towards the castle on the hill. Preston castle was supposedly haunted and looking back on it when you get released is a jinx to make you get violated early on parole. He doesnt believe in that, besides he had maxed out. Taking a lone and mournful look at that old stone edifice on the hill, over looking dorms named after alpine counties and species of trees. He hears it again, somebody calling to him. He searches the fence for one of his road dogs and doesnt see any one paying attention to him. Just wards walking to and from buildings, hands behind their back or lugging yard work tools. He turns back to the empty street and is shoved by a little bald asian with dark skin and eye buster gang tattoos. He puts his weight on his back foot and pulls back his curled fist to smash this fool. He doesnt get fully loaded into the punch before the angry face breaks into laughter and he feels a glint of recognition. You dont recognize me? For real fool? It dawns on him this is his adopted brother. A mixed Cambodian and black kid who got sent back from the group home for lighting the curtains on fire and tagging up the house. The eyes were the same but this little asian kid he remembers wearing super powers cartoon hat and trading action figures was now full grown and kind of mean looking. He had a bunch of bad tattoos under his eyes that say Homicide and Sepulveda Killa in angular gang writing. Ishmael says, They call me Mail Man. He thought this was Israel for a second but if he stayed with Mom it was likely he was strung out or in custody too. She had a way of psychologically ruining people. Love is a poison pill when your care giver is a sophisticated manipulator with narcissistic tendencies and a god complex. He smiles and it feels like cracking ice. He hasnt had many occasions to smile and it feels good. How did you find me Ricky? Ishmael asks. This kid he remembered from 1981 gives a glint of hostility and says. Dont call me that, they call me Homicide now! pushing his hand out in a formal reintroduction. Shaking his hand he feels a little of that charged CYA gang world protocol he has been living for the past decade. Who did you smoke fool? Homicide ignores him and gestures towards the 66 Chevelle full of alluring girls and a curious driver. Driving back he has two different girls shoving their hands down his fly, jacking his dick and riding him while the dudes in the front ignore them while loud music blares. The entire way back to South Central he wears out these chicks. One girl is Asian, the other Mexican and they are rabid nymphos but he still wears them out. They stop somewhere between Fresno and Bakersfield to use the bathroom and get the driver to buy him a bag full of 40s. He chugs two and before he knows is falls out drunk leaning against the window with cold drool dripping down the window. The girls are offended and in his dreams can hear them bitching. Chapter 2: Home is where the Hostility is Ishmael feels the chicks rubbing on his chest and neck. Every one is unloading from the car in front of a house party. Booming Gangster Rap comes blaring out of the open windows where gang members and their chicks are sitting on the screen less window sills. Every body is greeting him like a king and calling him OG. He doesnt feel drunk any more but makes a Bee-line for the sink to chug a couple cups of water before feeling like meeting new people. Instantly his eyes water up from rehydration. He takes a deep breath and is startled as he hears a gravelly voice he never wanted to hear again. His mothers. You happy to see me? He has practiced this moment a million times. He has felt like shooting this bitch in the head, socking her in the mouth, even throwing rubbing alcohol in her cheap weave and lighting her head on fire, but he is too shocked to say any thing as she approaches him like a spider in a hug. She smells like cinnamon, honey flavored liquor and cigarettes. She is whispering how much he missed him. He hasnt been hugged by any one in 10 years and feels a repulsion that is overwhelming. He roughly shoves her into the counter and yells Get off me bitch, dont ever talk to me again! A familiar contempt comes into her eyes. Yeah nigga Fuck you. This is a business transaction. Im buying silence and you staying the fuck out my house. She thrusts a crunched up paper bag into his chest. Thats 25 grand, to get on your feet. Welcome home. She walks out on him and he looks in the bag and sees two dozen stacks of assorted bills wrapped in blue broccoli rubber bands. He doesnt feel any thing. He read a book about sociopathy and psychopathy. He thinks he has an anti social personality disorder but most of his life he doesnt feel human emotions outside of hate. As he walks into the dark living room full of nasty dancing couples grinding in the reflections of mini disco ball lit up by a strobe light with a turning strip of colored gel making the room alternating between purple and blue light. Seeing a new strobe of light through the window he hears Every body break! Cops! feeling the heavy bag of money as a ticket back in the slammer he rushes out the back door and jumps the fence into the neighbors yard and runs out the other side of the block. He stashes the money in the hollow of a big oak tree and circles back to the party to try and find his ride. He sees a bunch of sheriffs cars but the deputies are wearing plain clothes. They must be off duty and looking for him. He crosses the street and ducks low to hear what they are saying. He hears them asking for him and sees the party goers in a mob antagonizing the cops. He hears a youngish cop saying Where is Ishmael Phillips? The gang members arent helpful and finishing beers, holding the bottles backwards like a weapon. The Sheriffs look fearful of the mob and retreat to their cars saying. Let him know we are looking for him, this isnt over. Somebody yells Fuck you! a roaring chant of Fuck The Police! reverberates from the front yard. An empty 40oz of Old English smashes between the cars as the Cops leave. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. He is startled by a shadow sulking back against he tree on his side of the street. Even in the silence of the night there is a malevolence. The guy keeps snorting out gouts of bloody snot and spitting black globs of smokers lung onto the sidewalk. From several feet away he can smell cheap vodka, rotten teeth and shit breath. In silhouette he can see a familiar leather player hat his Dad used to wear. He considered him self a ladies man. Something fancier than a golf hat or Kangol, right out of Up Town Saturday Night or Cooley High. The shadow lights a cigarette and says. Yo youngster. I saw you dogging out your mom. Ishmael doesnt say any thing, glaring at the older man watching him from the shadows. They call me Sarrow-Man. I used to run with your pops. We started the Ghost Towns together with Wolf, Devil Man, King Kong, OG Half Dead, Tall Can, Wasp, Tipsy and Dead Eye, Rest in Peace. Ishmael doesnt know how to respond. He is sizing this guy up. He could take two quick steps and crack this dude in the mouth, knocking him out. But the way he has his hand just out of sight gives him pause. He likely has a weapon. Something about this guy was corpse-like. Kind of crooked boned mummy from an EC comic book. Some vile spooky figure lying in wait with a voice like a rattlesnake with a mouth full of gold teeth. Hearing this character rattle off names of his Dads crew of stick up kids and contract killers doesnt mean much to him more than vague memories of dudes who used to hang out on his porch and show up for sneaky dealings with his mother once his father was out of the picture. These names are all hood legends but not to him. A bunch of unemployed dudes standing around car ports loitering doesnt mean shit to him. Any way, I said all that to say this. Your Mom is the Man around here. She is running the show and I dont want to see you causing any grief around here, thats my job. Ishmael sees the whole time this bozo had a revolver cupped in his hand almost out of sight. Ishmael says, As far as Im concerned she is just another Rat, Fuck her and fuck you too! Spitting at the mans feet for emphasis. Sarrow-man has a smile like an alligator that spotted a baby monkey walking on quicksand. Sarrow-Man says, Feel how you want about Jinxy but if you make any trouble with our cash flow, I wont come back to talk Ishmael watches as the shady character with his fake pimp-strut waltzes down the block between amber light of street lamps and pools of total blackness. Homicide has walked up and says, Yeah fuck that fool. Those dudes around your mom need to get checked. Any way lets blow this dive and get some rest. I think you got Parole appointment in the morning. I opened your mail and sounds like a got a chick Parole Officer. Ishmael is confused. He served his entire sentence with out a bit of credit for good time. He maxed out and the motherfuckers still got a leash on him. Chapter 3: Out of Bounds Israel Iggy Phillips, or Dizzy as his family calls him isnt a gangster, he is into art and music. All kinds of music, soul, post punk, industrial, rap, noise, Japanese speed metal. He is almost 14, kind of nerdy but still has a slight build and childlike glow. Trying to deliver a love letter to a white girl from school named Clair who has a crush on him. He was too shy to respond in person so he is telling her he wants to be together in a poem he wrote. He found her house one day selling candy for a school trip and didnt even know Clair, but she knew him and started talking to him in middle school. Israel feels uncertain being on the North side of the freeway. Even being neutral, his family isnt which makes him a target for any one trying to make a name for them selves. He was doing his best to make a name for him self. Secretly in the shadows, writing in creeks and under bridges. He was a tagger, not a tag banger or claiming any thing. Just into art and racking paint. He had a couple names he gave away or passed on, Glass, Jaguar, Plastic, Night. He gave those to homies from his crew once the names were up all city which over here meant any part of LA county you could ride a bus or train to. Headcase was his current name, or Heck FN, for Fucking Nobody! Something his old girlfriend used to yell when her mom asked who she snuck in her room. His best friend in the Boys Camp writes Sawyer, but he got caught smashing TVs onto the tops of buses, off the parking garage at the mall in the white neighborhood of Torrance. Made a driver swallow her false teeth and have a stoke, so Sawyer is gone for a county year. Leaving his neighborhood he looks at all the old names carved into the sidewalk. He sees graffiti so old it might as well be from the Pharaohs. Nicknames and lovers initials with years carved into these sidewalks when they built the 10 freeway in 1957. Gangs and love affairs of a bygone era. Back then having Black and Mexicans so near the beach was a new thing so there was kkk marks right next to hippie era slogans and early Ghost Town Crips marks from the 70s in the curb which must have been poured later. Stories about all the old time gangs filled his mind. Rebel Rousers, Green Jackets, Blood Alley, Harlem Godfathers, The Businessmen, The Chain Gang, Avenues, The Gladiators and The Slausons. Tough guys back in the big hair and blues era of the 1950s. Fighting over members only jackets and cardigans emblazoned with the name of their club. A more noble era of formal meetings for fist fights with rules and referees. These days your own family will sell you out to be killed for 10 sack of crack or meth. GTC. Thats his dads gang, like a long stain on the family because his dad was on death row for shooting a college student and her sleeping parents in a take over robbery at the same store he has to walk past every day to school. Now run by his uncle Elmer who was was supposed to be working that same night but called in sick. In the middle of the skywalk GTC and SSM tags cross each other out in red, blue and black layers. Even the metal hand rail is inscribed with gang threats. Back in the 70s his moms side were the Graveyard Groovers which became Gangster Bloods was their rival to the east across Washington Blvd across the Venice city line in an area called Bohemia. Enemies of the Ghost Towns and Sepulveda Barrio Fantomas, the older generation of The Muertos. All the gangs here had such severe names. No body knew for sure but rumors of old Indian graveyards being disturbed is the local lore. This neighborhood was always Ghost Town but according to his older family members it was all orchards and little shantys on the other side where illegals picked cherries, apples, plums and citrus. Some time in the 60s the apartments were built and south of the freeway became a slum. Back in those days racial division wasnt a thing. Every body was united against white gangs that grew up and became cops. The racism isnt overt. He said his dad started the gang to be safe from groups of surfers who would chase the poor kids off the beach, burn their cars and hit them with bricks when riding home from school. The white gangs had named like The Drifters, Imperials, Road Devils, Rooks, but they are long gone, white flight and desegregation of schools made all the middle class whites flee to the San Fernando valley. While pondering the geopolitical insights of turf wars and forgotten names engraved in sidewalks he is crossing out every name. Not writing his name, just hacking tags, slashing hoods, dissing RIP memories and putting Xs through heart felt testaments to the eternal love of high school sweethearts. Crossing the pedestrian walkway the feeling of the neighborhood changes. The largely mixed and working class character of Ghost Town changes into a treeless stretch of hundreds of sand colored apartments marked up in severe looking graffiti. Old English scrawls mark out the territory. Sepulveda is written in 8 foot tall letters on one side, broken up by a beautifully rendered Virgin Guadalupe with skeletal face paint. This is Santisma Muerte, the patron saint of criminals in Mexico. A religion of traffickers and gunmen. Santa Muertos on the right side. The entire wall 60 feet long marked up in a gang roll call and a memorial for slain members. Riding past the mural he does a big squiggly line through the entire sets placaso. Stopping to cross out each members name in a roll call with names of dead members and those in prison. Turning to admire his work he hears a bottle kicked into the street among a dark stand of trees and bushes that hides an electric box. Perfect place to lie in wait for outsiders to come across the bridge disrespecting. Iggy feels a chill in his bones. The bottle doesnt brake but the sound it makes rolling roughly over stones up to meet the tip of his shoe is so loud in the stillness of his side of the street where a freeway wall divides the apartments from the residential row houses on the other side. The street looks deserted, music booms from somewhere behind the apartments. Reaching the corner he zooms into the residential side street where Clair lives in a duplex with her cousins. She isnt an orphan but her mother is MIA and her dad was deported back to Mexico for touching other little girls. Clair is blonde with green eyes and looks white but her family is much more convincingly Brown-Latino. Pulling up to the alley between the houses, Israel comes up to Clairs window and does their secret knock. Giggling Clair peeks out the curtains and opens the window. They are both bashful but Israel has snuck out so he has to get back to his side of the freeway. Passing the note and says hes gotta go. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Clair doesnt want him to leave and starts crying. This brings unwanted attention from her cousins mom who doesnt approve of Clair having black friends, especially after dark showing up to knock on her window. The scowling silhouette in Clairs door slams the door and went back to bed. Israel hears an aggressive whistle coming from the roof of the car port. He sees the face of a kid his size, his face wearing a ski-mask and flashing gang signs. Israel takes the hint and kisses Clair through the hole in the window screen and jumps on his bike into the night. Looking back the alley he was just in have 3 more gang members warning Clair to not bring outsiders into their turf. Israel tries to go the long way out onto Sepulveda and around back north to Pico where he is safe. Before his eyes adjust to the dark he hears a voice so deep and full of authority it stops him in his tracks. SSM! To his horror the entire street is full of older teen agers blocking the long way out of the neighborhood beyond the illumination of the street lamps. This doesnt have the air of coincidence, alerted to the outsider the horde of gangsters sprint at him, some have bikes too and as he rushes back to the way he came and pedestrian bridge he can hear gunshots pop off and the super sonic whizzing by of bullets close enough to his ear. He feels one pierce the sole of his foot. Losing all composure he doesnt have the chance dive off the bike in a controlled way, losing balance he goes down hard on one knee with such inertia he slides on his palms and face another 10 feet. Getting his bearings he just barely gets on his bike as a chain and padlock send sparks off the asphalt he just popped up off. Feeling a pinch in his arm, he thought maybe a bee stung him. Having a can of silver spray paint he uses it to get some distance between the other youths on bikes who on his heels. Filling one guys eyes and nose with paint, catching another in the teeth with the bottom of the can. Sending the first guy onto hands and knees choking, the second wailing from a rush of blood where his front teeth used to be. This was enough to get about 20 feet away from the pack of shadowy gang members accosting him. Making it to the pedestrian bridge he pushes past a group of Mexican caballeros, granny trannies and homeless blocking the approach. Pushing past the throng of creeps he rushes onto the pedestrian bridge while looking back for trouble. Being over the zooming traffic made him feel at ease. Looking back he saw the Santa Muertos all stopped at the entrance watching. Hearing a nasty whisper... Diablo, he turns back to the bridge and sees a tall thin shape blocking his way, swinging a long gold chain and pocket watch. Dressed like an old time zoot suiter with fedora hat and a face a heavily tattooed face that looked like the angel of death. The visage of peril has definitely seen all the names crossed out. Stalking the skybridge, pacing back and forth, waiting for retribution. Iggy doesnt even see the punch coming. Just feels a crushing impact into his chest that feels like it popped open his ribcage like an autopsy. Feeling all the air knocked out of him, he lays on his back looking up at the cruel visage. He had heard the members of Santa Muertos who had killed for the gang were allowed to tattoo a skull face over their own. He was too terrified to say a word and the pachuco on the bridge snarled in a whisper like somebody with throat cancer. Get the fuck out of Sepulveda territory! If i see you again I will throw you off my bridge! Its only because I know your mom that you arent getting poked full of holes and strung up from a phone pole like Jesus! The voice was awful. Israel had heard of the old days when people would have their throats cut from ear to ear damaging the larynx. Snatched up off the ground like he weighed nothing he is slammed down on his bike so hard the back of the peddle digs into his heal deep. Trying to peddle but the chain is off, he is shoved so hard from behind he loses control and slams into the steel anchored cement pole at the end. He tries not to cry where the gang leader from Santa Muerte can hear him. He sees he is alone again and tries not to scream from the horrifying impact he just suffered. He cant even make a sound, the wind is knocked out and his brain isnt controlling his lungs. He panics laying there on the dirty cement. He gasps so aggressively it disturbs biting ants crawling all over the sidewalk. Trying to pick him self up, the heel of his palm feels broken and his elbow is dug into broken glass and sharp pieces of metal like little cork screws. Limping home he feels and uncontrollable need to purge his soul of the humiliation he just suffered. Getting to his door he wants to cry, a pressure is building up behind his eyes that feels like a bomb went off and his blood vessels are trying to hold up his skull like a blown up house in Gaza. His mom is gone, house is locked and the way he usually gets in is useless as his fingers feel cold and broken. Tears streaming he picks up a brick to smash the window to get inside and his neighbor sees him and gives him a funny look like, are you retarded? This neighbor is a rocker dude, an engineer for industrial bands. Iggy wipes his face and cant talk. He just lets his neighbor Torment ask the questions. Torment sees blood and ushers Iggy inside where 2 goth-punk rocker chicks Maledicion and Lucinda sit working on homework and drop what they are doing to clean him up. Iggy forgot he got shot, his whole leg hurts like he broke it. His knee hurts a whole lot more, probably dislocated the knee cap. As soon as he takes his shoe off and a quart of blood comes out with a strange suction sound like stomping through a marsh. The gothic girls realize this is no laughing matter they pile in Torments souped up black 1970 Ford Ranchero GT with yellow and orange racing stripes like something out of Mad Max, the back end lifted in a muscular stance. Packed in like sardines, race to the ER across town. Iggy appreciates the feminine energy. Even though these punk rockers have safety pins through eye brows, crazy hair and black clothes they are better Christians than any one he heard rant about hell and brimstone. Torment has a tape of his newest project from a Chicago noise band. Iggy nods his head but loses the struggle to unconsciousness. Chapter 4: Officer Willows Ishmael is in a deep sleep when he is shaken awake to meet with parole. Homicide passes him the letter that says to report in the Adult Parole at 9am. Crossing town they get held up by a school bus that collided with Toyota mini truck that tried to squeeze through when the bus made a wide turn. Its a minor fender bender but only way out was to drive up on the sidewalk the wrong way and dip thought the side streets and alleyways. This got him in the door at 9:07 and he knew this was a trip back to jail. No way he would be walking out of here. He gave his name at the window, was told to wait on second floor and every bone in his body was telling him to go on the run. He was more curious than scared but thoughts of driving into Mexico and getting an English speaking job in Belize or Cuba filled his mind. He kept getting up to drink water and no one seemed to be ready to chase him down if he bolted for the parking lot. Before the urge to go on the lamb was uncontrollable his name was called by a short but ravishingly beautiful Officer with glasses and a warm smile. She says, Im not going to dock you for being late because I had a chance to eat a late breakfast but next time we will have problems. He follows her to little interview room with no windows, a plastic potted plant and inspirational posters on the wall, Jr. College flyers and schedules for domestic violence classes. He is nervous, and hesitant to shake her hand. She says, You dont remember me do you? He honestly has no idea. We went to elementary together and used to trade action figures and comic books. He instantly gets it. They had a crush on each other and used to play fight has Han Solo and Leia from Return of the Jedi. She gets serious and opens an appointment book. I am officer Willows, ordinarily this would be a conflict of interest but we are short staffed and I dont see a problem with us working together if we can keep it professional. She is beautiful and he keeps thinking of the Comic Book Mafia they used to have a little club where they would buy and sell comics which was a highly looked down on by the school. Officer Willows continues, You will need to have a job and make regular payments to your fines and fees unless you want to be coming back here forever. Ishmael is confused, I served my entire sentence, despite being innocent. Why do I have to come to Adult Parole when my case was as a minor? Willows says, I dont know the specifics of your case, but you got 7 years suspended as an adult, stay away from police contact, and can test clean for drugs and alcohol I can let you off in 3 years. If you pay your fees early I will petition the court to cut you short. But any police contact you will be in prison until you are 30. He wants to start yelling and kick a chair into the wall but he only grumbles in his head. Willows asks, Do you have any prospects for employment or school? What are you good at? Ishmael thinks, he cant say tattooing, chopping up lowriders or selling weed but those are his first thoughts. He remembers his ambitions as a kid to draw comic books, direct movies or write code for video games so hes says as much. This gets a big smile and she gives him a business card with an appointment in two weeks. I need you to do a urinalysis test, are you ready? Handing him a cup and pointing out the bathroom where some stern Cop is watching you go. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Relieved to be out of the grasp of the system... Mail Man and Homicide decide to cruise around Venice Blvd, Robertson and West Pico for nostalgia. Check out the spots that have changed. Whole strips of houses are gone, replaced by nothing. Empty fields with developer signs. Ishmael wants to check on his brother but doesnt want to deal with his mom, Homicide goes in and speaks to her. Comes running out with a note covered in blood from the neighbor saying Israel got beat up and shot in the foot with a name of the hospital. They race out of the little side street off Sawtell where the mother lived. They didnt see two sinister looking Sheriffs in an unmarked car furtively follow them onto the freeway. Pulling up the the Wexler-Day Trauma Center they park diagonally across the ambulance bay and run inside. The nurses security conscious wont tell Ishmael any info because he is not the guardian. This causes a guard to step forward and get two pieced by Homicide who seriously startles the security guard with the first punch. Really knocked him out on the balls of his feet. Homicide has that glee in his eye that this is about to get carried away. Ishmael tries to stop him as another nasty combo lands on the guards eyes and chin as he is knocked out on his feet. A final punch to the jaw with a sickening pop sound. Ishmael knew this guy was suffering an internal dislocation of the cheek bone and right orbital. Falling back onto the counter, mouth full of blood and broken teeth, legs involuntarily kicking in slow motion video of Elvis from the 50s. This will be a trip back to jail as an accomplice for sure. The nurses dont even panic. They are veterans and get loud and crazy them selves. Big sturdy women who react by taking ear rings and bracelets off to get physically involved. Just as the two Sheriffs in plain clothes rush in the double doors a gunshot goes off down a long hallway clear to the other side of the block. Ishmael makes eye contact with one and notices they are both wearing what looks like beanies but on closer inspection are baklavas with eye holes. He looks at the bulge of a gun belt and ankle holster. They are here to kill him. His instincts about these things refined over years of institutional combat. The Sheriffs run past him to address the gunshots giving time for Homicide and Mail Man to bum rush the doors to the Trauma ward in the chaos. Iggy should be in the ER. Checking all the closed curtains he sees a lot of old people hooked up to tubes, young guys glaring while handcuffed, hookers with cut up faces and several cholos holding a vigil around a dying compatriot. Thinking they struck out Mail Man turns back to the way they came in and sees unmistakable his brother Israel sitting with the nurses eating ice cream and having his wound dressed by a hot nurse with a round ass. They dont say any thing, jump up in a display of joyous homecoming or any thing. Just a shared smirk and subtle handshake. Nurses realize this is his ride and hand over papers to sign with out asking any intrusive questions. The nurse wheels Israel to the door where they have to take back their wheel chair and trade it for crutches. Israel has a grey plastic brace on his foot and a blue cast. Before long they are headed to a diner to catch up. Chapter 5: Thoughts and Ponderances, San Quentin’s “Death Row” Robespierre Toussaint Phillips meditates on his present. He went through all the stages of grief, regret, rage, despondence and now is in a place of acceptance. He took the Swahili name Mwasi which meant rebel or revolutionary and paired it with the Arabic word for martyr Al-Shahid. The guards would not call him Mwasi Al-Shahid. He had to answer to roll call under the name he was condemned under. The name his people back in Mississippi named him. It was a proud name he always cherished. Robespierre the zealot of the French revolution, and Toussaint who led the Caribbean slaves to freedom against France. He went through a Marxist phase reading the war diaries of Che Guevara and writings of the luminaries of the Black Panther Party, works of Ghassan Kanafani who founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Ideas change and now he is a student of many philosophies but master of none. It was common to accept Islam by African American inmates. It gave him peace for a time, but he was interested in many things beyond the scope of its ideas. He read on Anarchism, read about nationalism struggles and about wars through out history. He had pro bono college kids come help with his case, after a while even the most dedicated drifted off back to their lives, every once in a while he gets Christmas cards from his old legal team. He had a face full of boxers scars to show his formidability as a warrior, but at this stage in life so close to execution he was interested in the idea of being a warrior in a garden. He found him self studying plants and animals from all over the world. Eastern works by Musashi Muyamoto and Hindu scholars. Now he limits his reading to a few hours in the morning and a few in the evening. This kept the wild rush of serotonin drain that comes from the weight of being on death row among the lost and hopeless, the enraged youth and the wise elders. Mwasi has written several books and talked to graduate students in interviews with the press about the changes his soul has undertaken since being condemned. No matter what he does thats positive, the conservative media paints him as a vicious killer whose very existence is a threat to society. A gang leader, a convicted murderer and a con man making publicity stunts to save his own neck. That is possible, after all the core of human nature is self preservation but he likes to think the changes he made are authentic and he has some genuine redeeming qualities to share with mankind. Early stage grief exhaustion is a familiar symptom here. Its easy to read day and night for years until your neck is rolled into a crook that keeps you from sleeping soundly until you never want to read again. He used to have perfect eye sight but years of the yellow buzzing dim cell has done a number on him. Needing reading glasses recently, they wont prescribe him anything unless its life threatening. He had to have a pair smuggled in. The men here come in hard core, spending decades in civil wars and stabbing each other over chess games of subliminal disses in conversations long past. Before the end, many come to a healing place in their journey. They warehouses leaders of the most dangerous hoods in California, drug smuggling groups, Italian and Mexican mob and Hells Angels hitmen all come to rest in a place of deep wisdom long before their number is called. Its a shame some of these minds didnt put their brilliance into legal work. Some have multiple college degrees, publish in journals and even a couple best selling authors. Hoping to leave some sign of their legacy when the stagnant State of California execution schedules move again. It stops completely under Democrats, speeds up during Right Wingers. Once or twice life saving exhonerating information was blocked to both sides, sending innocent men to die. He remembers the hippie manifesto of Ram Das, Be here now. Sitting in an eased meditation posture on his folded mattress. He listens for the small sounds of life outside of the roar of deadmen slowly going insane. Past the bars slamming shut, the noise of buildings full of shouting, PA announcements by guards there was something else. Songs of birds, the rush of a jet taking off across the bay at SFO. He wishes he could hear the sounds of breaking waves. He would do anything to do simple things like spend a day at the beach, go fishing in the Sierras, camping at Big Bear or Yosemite. He can wish, visualize and study books. Never an artist on the streets, he has developed a real skill with paint. Rendering amazing landscapes out of National Geographic and Time. He loves to hear about the prison guards pets and hiking trips. Closing his eyes to take in the nuance of walking the Pacific Crest Trail, Kayaking the Alaskan fjords among glaciers, traveling in the rain forests of the Congo. He is a member of World Wildlife Foundation and even writes a radical activist girl from Earth First who became obsessed with his case at The Innocence Project. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. He has only tangential information on his 2 sons. Born to a she wolf. Ishmael and Israel, left to fend for them selves in a world that as Native American poet John Trudell says eats souls. Mwasi knows his son was locked up on a murder and using jail house arithmetic figures he should be getting out soon. He has no way of knowing where to send a letter, other than shooting kites to the runner on the tier to see if one of his people could relay a message. This is risky. Allowing criminals access to you family comes with danger of the unknown. No matter how ferocious your reputation for murder is, or level of atrocity you are comfortable subjecting your foes to its hard to gauge the dope fiend itch people get. Convicts and gangsters with pedigree of his generation are more predictable. To at least tell you if they bedded you woman, or shot your brother in a card game, but this new generation will rob your grandmother and set her on fire just to find out what burning hair smells like. Reminds him of the old proverb, the cast out child will burn the village just to feel its warmth. Those are true words with the generation his had failed. The thugs today dont live in a milieu of honor and respect. They dont help the mail lady pick up her spilled bag. They jump her with boxcutters, leaving her disfigured for the junk mail in her bag. In his day music was about soul, love, revolution, dignity. Now its all about abject poverty, despair, gangsterism, self destruction, predation. This is noble ideas from a man who was convicted of killing a tired college student in her parents store, coming up the stairs and executing the mother hiding behind a bathroom door and putting a shotgun right up to the fathers chin, blowing his jaw bone and one of his eyes into the street bellow. He has replayed what was said at court a million times. Fiery diatribes by a DA team with political ambitions. Mwasi tries to remember if he did it, but always draws a blank. He honestly feels in his bones he was framed, betrayed while sleeping in his own bed that night. Was he born under a bad sign? So unlucky that a combination of cosmic coincidences and false clues put a target on his back? Alas that is what every body says. 99% of guys down here in the tombs cry their first couple years they were framed. Its a big misunderstanding, or tell a different version of events for every day of the week where they are the victim. The universe has conspired to change the chemical makeup of stars and time and space to frame them a little shivering dope fiend from south central or east LA who sliced the throat of a cabbie, dragged an old lady 700 feet over cement parking blocks, tearing a womans arms off to steal 59 dollars and a silver watch. It boggles the mind the things young and misled youth will end up getting condemned to the needle for. He has watched the method change from gas and electric to lethal injection. Now instead of a scientific curiosity of electric death, or the stressful wait for sodium cyanide tablets to liquify in sulfuric acid. Now they are being put down like animals. Put to sleep with a burning poison that freezes the lungs, retards the hearts ability to pump and causes death over a coarse of half an hour. Trying to breathe, trying to cry out, fighting restraints, whispering prayers to the contempt of racist guards, lying prosecution teams and families who dont care if you did it as long as someone pays for their pain. Mwasi takes a deep breath looking out the window, seeing but not able to hear seagulls and the bells of clipper ships moored on pilings in San Rafael Bay. He hoped he could sleep tonight, but he was ready to watch the dawn rise if thats how it worked out. Chapter 6: A Day Late and Dollar Short Jinx is in one of her black moods. She has been finding her returns short, extremely short. One of these cock sucking runners is stealing. Biting into the delivery. On one end or the other either her guys or the other side is playing with her. She has tried to narrow it down, find out who thinks they are smarter than her. There is no good answer, it cant be just one of the runners or local pushers, amount gone is too consistent from different locations like somebody in on the count is alternating the skim to hide the source. An example needs to be made so she picks a dude named Daryl Dogshit Oats from a smaller turf that wouldnt be a major loss. Not like letting people think she is weak. She decides if Dogshit Daryl is even one penny short, something dark and satisfying is coming. Dogshit has a kind of feminine way of talking, wears rhinestone shirts and has a ridiculous hair cut from the disco era. He wears a fake diamond ear ring and greasy mustache like the singer of Cameo, wears outdated fashion like its still 1986 in a Midnight Star video. He thinks he is so charming. Jinx lights a cigarette and passes loud gas that pauses his line of bullshit with what she guesses was a question because she wasnt listening. Tug Tug and Sorrow-Man laughing and covering their noses from the heavy steak eating odor from Jinxs asshole. She isnt smiling and Dogshit starts to second guess himself. Stuttering. Jinx has a cruel tone to her voice, shrill and biting, an inflection women use when they want to provoke violence when they got you at a disadvantage. She says, Nah fuck that! Keep telling me its a coincidence every time you fucking short with my shit, but driving around in a brand new white BMW with your faggy little boyfriends down La Brea and La Cienega! She isnt even listening as Dogshit goes through some story about being tricked by some dope fiends in an abandoned house and how he put in his own money to bring the count up close to normal. Dogshit seems so sure of his BS. Its always a coincidence she thinks. As Dogshit smiles and winks with his jive charm she gets up to pour a line and Dogshit asks her to hook him up. Placing a mirror in front of Dogshit, he snorts a big rail of what he doesnt realize is crystalized battery acid. She nods towards Sarrow-Man and a big killer she employs named Tug Tug to close the steel shutters she installed inside the doors and window to be hidden from outside. Dogshit starts whining about the sting, frantically trying to rub water in the nostril he just filled with caustic sulfuric acid crystals. Once Dogshit leaps to his feet to rush to the sink, the trap is set. Jinx lets out a rage filled war cry and smashes Dogshit in the mouth with heavy square meat tenderizer, the heavy kind with rows of triangle blocks. Turning his mouth into splinters of bone. Dogshit lets out a little richard sounding shriek, before he can react to cover his face Sarrow-Man and Tug Tug jump on him. Each taking hold of his arms, while Jinx rips up chunks of his scalp and face like a Roman scourge. Daryl flays around like a cat on a hot tin roof. Murmuring some pitiful lies. She is actually curious and puts her face next to his and thinks he said He is a cop Before she can process that he bites down hard into her face. Taking her chubby cheek into his teeth and shaking it like a wild dog. She hits him in the eye with a hook with her tiny hands. Tiny boney fists full of nasty rings. The punch resounds with a hollow knock sound. She either broke her hand or his face. Dogshit lunges at her with a savage growl like a chihuahua, sinking his teeth into her shoulder. Tears a third of her right trapizus muscle off with a yank as he falls to the floor. Sarrow-Man drops a cruel knee onto Dogshits pelvis and hip bone, breaking them like twigs with one wrap. Tug Tug has retreated to get plastic drop cloths and a hacksaw for disassembling the body. Dogshit has got a hold of a gun from his waistband in the ruckus, firing 2 shots at Jinx legs, grazing one. She cant believe it and stomps the gun from his hand. Feeling possessed by unquellable rage, she pours a bottle of cognac over Dogshit and lights him on fire. The polyester bullshit he is wearing burns off his back in seconds but his slack pants stay aflame, searing his thighs a magenta color. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Now he is kicking at her. She takes a step back and kicks his testicals like a kicker in a championship game. Sarrow-Man turns up the radio full blast to En Vogues Free your Mind before he and Tug Tug join in with crow bars and tire irons. This goes on for a few minutes until they decide to drag Dogshit Daryl into a half remodeled bath room with a crawl space to the pipes under the house cut in the floor. Putting Dogshits body in the bathtub they take turns holding him and tying him up with bungie cords while the others saw away, taking his arms and legs off slowly over hours. Dogshit now can only make pitiful sounds like a buzzing as his vocal chords are totally shot from hours of trying to scream while he is cut into pieces still alive. Removing his gag he hisses some half curse, half promise to lead them to a stash of the missing money. Laying there in the tub he eventually stops breathing from blood loss, in a tub full of blood so dark it looks like burgundy wine. His eyes glazed over and lifeless. Jinx is a little annoyed, she had been watching videos on CIA trained Contras using jumper cables on school teachers in Nicaragua. Something she has been wanting to try out. Now they need to burn the stash house and take Dogshits torso elsewhere, since jinx has rules about these kind of things. Never bury a body where it expired, never leave a witness with a rep as a bragger and always try to feed starving animals. Now that the abandoned hideout is covered in so much blood they might as well cleave the torso in two. Guts in one bag, halved arms, legs and head in another. Third the empty torso in the last. While Tug Tug removes whats left of the weeks count, their bricks of money are totally covered in blood. Jinx tells Sorrow-Man to wash the money with acetone and not to forget left over kilos, plastic wraps and scales, power tools, any remains of parties, beer cans, wine glasses, ashtrays. Nothing with any DNA or fingerprints can remain. Jinx and Sarrow-Man walk around the neighborhood throwing pieces of meat, organs and bone into yards with neglected dogs. Leaving piles of muscle for raccoons and cats at the edges of the oil fields off Stoker. Head, brain and internal organs separated in separate garbage bags to go in a homeless bon fire pit in the LA river. She takes trips down to the shipping yards in Long Beach and San Pedro to dispose of lyin ass thieves who ended up cut apart with an electric knife or buried under a footings for a commercial warehouse across the county. Sometimes she even goes out to Riverside and 29 Palms to dispose of shit talking informants or rival dealers. One time they even went out to Vegas to feed the stray dogs and hit the slot machines. They have this disassembly down to an art, most efficient ways to break up the bits of skull and nails over behind the golf coarse. She read a couple books on Jeffrey Dahmer and Roy DeMeo to learn new ideas like using acid or commercial freezers. Only once or twice she left a body in a vacant lot or rival gangs territory. Leaving a body in a skid row tent or beside a freeway was something she enjoyed early in her career, the body had to completely liquify and become too putrid to identify first. That means she had to have several spots to leave them like abandoned factories rolled in a carpet or wrapped up heavy canvas or mummified in a couple inches of dry paint. Every couple weeks they have a bbq where they dispose of skull fragments at the beach. Putting them into potato sacks on the street, smashing it up as cement trucks roll by to the quarry. She always throws loose teeth in the ocean or percolation ponds. This isnt the first time. She just wanted every body in her sphere of influence to know Jinx will cut out your fucking heart and curse your god damn soul if you come short. She has a lot of little graveyards around the west side, near high tension wires and on bluffs where the city tore down luxury houses at the foot of LAX runways, beside culverts and even in yards of some fancy condos when she had a gig cleaning houses for a realtor. The big mucks out in Beverly Hills and Malibu never realized their slutty french maid came to work with a bag of bones in vacuum bag or human ashes in a coffee thermos to pour out the window to mix with the high end manicured lawns of mansions along Sunset Blvd by the University. Chapter 7: Diablo Dreams of Burning in Flames Rigoberto Diablo Salcedo had a recurring nightmare. It was some time in the 70s when he was small. Living in a nameless Mexican village in the hills facing El Paso Texas. His mother had him young in East LA, both his parents were cholos from Varrio Nuevo Estrada. His dad ended up being a big man in the EME, been on Death Row for an overdosing the connect in drug house robbery in 1980. His mom left him in Mexico on vacation because she had to turn her self in to jail. She never did, or come back for him. His Abuela was a little blind woman who worked the local Brujas gathering herbs and special alcohol for love potions and rituals to contact the dead. She also ran a loteria game out of her bungalow. As a kid Diablo loved candy. He could steal any thing to get some, and when caught Abuela would burn his back with grease from the hot stove. This left so many burns on his body he had more scar tissue than normal unburned skin. This made his tattoos look like melted cheese on burned bread. By the time he was 10 Abuela was hit by a military police jeep chasing a suspect up the hill. This meant that the local macho guys wanted the house and before the funeral was over every thing they owned was discarded in the street, picked over by goats, lepers and starving dogs. He lived on the streets for 2 years, stealing, hustling and running away from Catholic boys homes. During this time he considered the priesthood. He learned to recite much of the Holy Bible in English, Spanish and some Latin. He didnt have the spiritual aspect. To him it was a framework of grifting. If you could quote the Bible like the devil with a spiked tail, tourists and widows were more likely to offer you meals. This is where he learned about drugings. A couple times tourists slipped something in his drink and wronged him. Seeing those faces again, he subjected them to brutal assaults with bottles and sticks in the lonely allies where these types sought homeless children. Soon with his own arsenal of scavenged knock out drugs he made enough money to hire coyotes to guide him into San Diego from Tijuana. Using these talents on people giving him a lift back to LA, he started to have strange addictions to luring people to lonely places and killing them. It could be a car full of christian girls on a charity mission, a rock band on tour or old white men with the long gaze of a pervert. Then he would guide them to some place to eat, or back into the trees where he would savagely strangle and beat them with a claw hammer or bowling pin. He liked stabbing the most but it left too many clues, and he was an ace about taking notes from cop shows. Every time he changed the M.O. Some times he would leave a tequila bottle in car and kick the gear shift into neutral, sliding it into a lake with popped tires. Other times a needle full of heroin broken off in vein, or a single gunshot to the lower mouth. He has been good so far. Santa Monica College and UCLA were tempting hunting grounds but he didnt want to shit where he eats. Always talking him self out of good chances. Sometime when walking along the bluffs by the pier he would find a girl crying about a lost love or a house wife drinking up the courage to jump. He would make them laugh, tell them enough lies to think he was an angel by their side, then spent the rest of the night roughly ravaging them in the bushes, doing messy cunnilingus on the corpse after they died. Always taking the ID and house keys, he would let him self into their house and see what was inside. A couple times he imagined he didnt, he fell under their charm and let them invite him to come home with them. Making him meals and living that American apple pie dream. It lasted a day or two until they wanted the Mexican gang member with face tattoos to sneak outside so the neighbors wouldnt see their double life. The shadows of late night weakness or lonely women cruising for hard young men to come inside, giving them something to live for. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. His night terrors were always less during these times. Sometimes he dreams of being in an apartment as a baby and watching the curtains burn, feeling abandoned by a teenage mother who went out to party with candles burning and windows opening in a storm. He sometimes feels eyes watching him as he walks at night. Feeling the voices of the unloved and murdered curse him from just beyond the street lights. Even if he was the leader of a big gang and had an army of little followers it didnt keep the devils whispers away. He thought he heard so many stories of the damned in the still hours of the night. He never had a real job for more than a week. He tried auto work, tree trimming, pool cleaning and even painting abandoned stores at the pier for the city. His destructive nature was too much to stop as his urge to rip and slash and burn, powerful soul shaking, it was overwhelming. Being in a store by himself or a nice house was too much. Kicking pottery, slamming dogs into the ceiling and crashing cars into fences was all he wanted. Crashing firme stolen rides into fire hydrants, sending a spray of fire lines into the air like Vegas. As a kid he used to like to smash the toilets at parks with a sledge hammer. The name for this was Misanthropist. He enjoyed violence and seeing calm days turn into screaming and dashing civilians panicked because he put firecrackers in a babies stroller or kicked an old man into traffic. He doesnt know why, he just feels so good whipping a jogger across the face with a heavy chain or slashing throats at the porno theater. Even as a little chavalito he was busting windows with roller skates to steal comic books or climbing in windows to get his neighbors Nintendo. Breaking into cars to steal 8 track tapes he couldnt even play. He even stole Christmas trees just to set them on fire to throw onto the freeway. A fortuitous time he met a bunch of famous traveling skate boarders and held them hostage in an abandoned strip mall down by Crenshaw for ransom. He got the money and instead of letting them go injected them with opiates, covering their faces and hands with cryptic heavy metal jargon in the same crayon from the note. Leaving a couple marked dollar bills tucked into their expensive basketball shoes. Leading the cops to think they planned it them selves. This is what led to murder for hire. He did jobs for a couple Crime Families, what was left of the Italian and jew mob was pussy about murder now a days. They rather have a spick they never see again shoot their top guy at a traffic light or kick down a door to a secluded fuck pad in the hills to take pictures of a well known city council man dead with a young boy compromised. Outside the supposed gang war he also took jobs from the other Side. Jinx was at the same time the wife of a main founder of Ghost Town, but related to the Graveyard Bloods. Overtly their neighborhoods were kill on sight, but covertly he would clean house for her on his side. Knocking down rival dealers, planting evidence, luring enemies to be executed at meetings. Jinx wasnt some enterprising mastermind, she was the spook mistress of the head of a squad of dirty sheriffs who sold dope and trafficked children on the side. These guys were plugged into city hall, the feds and the Israeli embassy. They even had special training for how to hide signs of torture on corpses from the Shinbet secret police with contracts to train cops stateside. This meant Diablo had not just his rivals padding his pocket, but by proxy a license to kill from the cop side. He had no issue dressing like a swishy faggot to lure a group of bikers outside, right into he muzzle of a submachine gun belly high. He could also imitate surfers affluent accent of trust fund kids on the west side to zap porn distributors, strip club owners or rival real estate developers for the corporate side. He never met any body besides Jinx and a couple Sheriffs. They would drive him around looking at places and people, take him out to lunch with a envelope full or news paper clippings and photos. Then take him back to his detestable life where he would tie his mother off with dope, and sing her oldies songs while she called him by the name of his dead brother Timoteo who was her favorite before he got gay bashed in Hermosa Beach, found set on fire in a shopping cart by a group of skinheads back in 85. Chapter 8: Day One Freedom Ishmael Had been thinking about Venice Shoreline College for a while, one of his pen pals had told him about how to sign up and get a free ride because he was in foster homes. Getting dropped off is fortuitous as the man working in the office that day is also one of the film teachers, Mr. Carnegie. Taking Ishmael for a walk around the campus. Showing off the Journalism, Film, Computer science, Counciling and General Ed Departments. They joke around and by the time they return to the front building, they seem to have a good rapport. Helping him fill out some simple forms. Ishmaels dyslexia reveals its self. Showing Ishmael to a private room with one computer. Mail Man begins punching in his info. Since he has no formal address yet he makes up some of the fine details. Finishing several tasks he is aghast to see an awful sight. His entire chair is filling with a brown fluid. Looking down his shirt is bleeding with a brown and red stain. MD tries to kick off his shoes and pants before he is totally inundated with this nasty stuff. Reaching under his shirt he can feel the catheter unhooked from his Colostomy bag. Just as this is happening. Mr Carnegie has come up to the plexy glass window and his smile fades as MD is sitting bare-assed in a pool of liquid feces. Medical waste discharge is a risk with any one with severe punctures leading to removal of the intestine. Making plastic tubes and discharge bags a sad reality. With rare class and grace Mr Carnegie pops back in the room with yellow gloves, a disinfectant spray bottle with a roll of brown paper towels under his arm. At the same time Jasper, another intake staff comes and swipes a key card in the computer before Ishmael can stop him, saying Some one spilled coffee? Smelling his fingers and noticing what looks like chucks of tomatoes and carrot bits in the mess. Ishmael looks at Carnegie and tells him. Im sorry my Catheter sprung a leak, I couldnt stop it before it got every where. Mr. Carnegie is an old hippie who smells like Frankincense and Myrrh, wears wooden Yogi beads with a calm and thoughtful demeanor. He smiles and says. Help me wheel that chair out to the back. Mr Carnegie waves Jasper back and says quietly. Medical Emergency, leave that mess to me and mark off the room keep out the students turn off the lights please. Walking out the back door towards the field. Mr Carnegie asks, Why do you know that terminology? Ishmael says. I got stabbed 29 times and lost 17 feet of intestine. Lifting up his shirt to show white tubes and an artificial colon bag taped to his chest. Across the field Officer Willows sees this and drops the basket ball she was about to do a jump shot. Mr Carnegie asks, What did they call you inside? Ishmael gives a clipped response almost under his breath. Mail Man. Mr Carnegie smiles and says. I did some time back in the 60s. Got entrapped by a Narcotics Agent. Spent 6 years in Federal Prison for a frame up on a dope bust. They called me Looney Bin because I was an orderly in a Mental Hospital before they busted me. As Mr. Carnegie and Ishmael wheel the soiled chair to the dumpster, Ishmael asks Carnegie. Why did you handle this so well? Shit being all over the key board and mouse Carnegie says, I had a motorcycle accident in the 70s, had the same kind of injuries before they got fixed. Showing his own scar that looks like a sideways 7. Ishmael nods vacantly. This is a bad look. He is considering excusing him self and never coming back. A shameful thing but at the same time Ishmael has fallen in love with Venice Shoreline College, their mascot of a baby devil riding a skate board. All the pretty girls, the wind in the trees. This was a damn shame. He should have checked the tape and valves before agreeing to do a couple hours of paperwork. He notices in horror his P.O. making eye contact and heading his way. He tries to avoid eye contact but its too late. In the back of his head he thinks she is there to arrest him. Officer Willows jogs up. Carnegie says Hi Letecia, this young man had a medical emergency. We are trying to get him some fresh clothes from the gym. Willows says. I didnt see any back there, but I might have a spare set of sweats and t-shirt in my car. Carnegie says. I have to get back to the office, but i hope to see you come back. Dont take this set back as a reason to give up on school. We are happy to have you here and I want to hear more about your ideas for film projects. Carnegie puts his hand on Ishmaels shoulder and smiles. Dont sweat it, stuff like this happens all the time. We have great counselors at the disabled student center. Take my card and I will walk you though your Financial Aid options next time. Willows asks. What are you doing here? He says he is, Going to take Journalism and Film. He asks about her classes. She replies. Im doing a double Masters. Studying Criminal Justice and Womens Studies, but I think my heart is more in Social Work and Therapy. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Willows sees his backside and bottom of his shirt covered in brown discharge but doesnt ask. Ishmael tells her. I got into it with the Mexicans inside, a large part of my colon and stomach had to be removed. She has tears in her eyes, directing him to the showers while she runs to her car. Ishmael undresses, leaving the stained clothes in a rubber trash can. Standing there as the cold water almost burns his skin with its frigid blast. He has a flashback of getting stabbed that causes him to lose his footing. In his minds eye, sees callous eyes and 3 enemies plunging prison made shanks into his skin is intense. White flashes of being punched in the face. Hit with bricks, beaten as a kid with electric cords finished off by his mom setting him up for his case. He is rocking back and forth, in a daze as Willows has returned but hangs back around the corner. Too shocked to speak seeing him rising from the floor nude. Ishmael finishes up washing him self once the water is hot. Turning around they both have an ashamed look on their faces. She smiles and says. These arent clean, i hope they dont smell sweaty. He smells the clothes and says. Better than smelling like burnt coffee and medical waste. No they smell sweet. Holding out the shirt. It says, UC Santa Cruz. Banana Slugs. Willows bursts into laughter. Sorry, its their mascot. He smiles. No, this is cool. I want to check out this school some time. Walking out towards the front parking lot together, she sees him walking towards the bus loop and decides to drive him back to his place. He tries to talk her out of it but her official capacity as Probation Officer kicks in. Orders him in the car. For a while they dont talk, grooving to obscure Hip Hop, Classic Soul and R&B. Pointing the turns. Willows starts to see the area getting worse and worse until they arrive under a freeway. She thinks he is scamming her and leans down to look where he is staying. High above on a cement platform is a homeless camp up on a concrete span under the freeway about 40 feet up. Following him up the hill, around a fence covered in blackberry thorns and deep into the shadows there is a path up towards the freeway fence. She slides a little bit on sand and broken glass, he helps her up the rest of the way to an upper trail against a chain link fence separating them from speeding cars. Ducking bellow a steel beam full of nasty bolts and spiderwebs, the space beyond is surprisingly big. A jarring sight as the ledge is at least 50 feet above a pile of rusty shopping carts, stripped down abandoned cars and burned pallets. He smiles and says. Its even got a fire place. A giant empty space inside the freeway bridge. The ninja turtles theme song comes into her head. They are alone in a place that feels like a lost metal Cathedral. Silent save for pigeons taking flight, dusty and lit from above. Torrents of swirling ash and smoke rays of light from a grill in the bridge above give the place a strange peaceful feeling. Breaks in the traffic horns, the whooshing sound can almost fool you into thinking you are listening to a waterfall. The racing cars have a rhythmic thumping you feel more than hear, except when a bus or harley passes over then there is a zipping sound of big vehicles on the drain grates above. Willows surveys the place. Its so dusty. Every thing is covered in a while film of dust and grime. Other than what looks like space dust, its surprisingly clean. Ishmael smiles and says, For now this is my pad. She grimaces. You cant stay here. There is too much risk of other people leaving drugs or weapons around, I would have to violate you for that. He says. Its just me and my road dog Bird. He is only here once in a while. He stays with his girlfriend in the city. This was his place before me. Looking around she sees a pile of cardboard stacked 10 inches high, flattened into a makeshift bed. A crate full of paperback books. Several cat food bowls and a family of raccoons peaking out from inside a drainpipe. She asks. What about when it rains? He smiles and says. Ive never been washed out, but i havent been here for a big storm either. He strips down and returns her shirt. Her eyes follow his hands to take in the scars and the tubing. He picks up some alcohol wipes and tosses the leaking rig and bag down into the darkness bellow. She smiles and says. I should take you in for littering. Ishmael grabs a new Ostomy bag and tubing from inside a plastic and paper wrapper. Putting on his own shirt. He says. I will give you back the pants in a day or two once I do laundry. She smiles and tells him to keep them. Walking her back to her car. She says. I will work on getting you housing. Officially we will go off the bogus address you gave me, but I cant have you out here in the elements. He smiles and says. This is the freest I have ever been. Im not going to live in some shelter or county facility. Besides the train and fire trucks. I enjoy being outside. I found serenity. She smiles at his use of the word and repeats. Serenity You have a poets soul. Smiling at each other where any other situation they would go in for a kiss. She catches her self and blinks away the obvious crush she is reciprocating. Formally she extends her hand. Alright then. Remember your appointment and no police contact. Chapter 9: Sheriffs South West Division Substation Inside the LA county Sheriffs Office there are clicks of Cop gangs. The Reapers, Vikings, Death Squad and Raiders. They all cover up for each others assaults, drug dealing and murder for hire. Deputies Rockwell and Sanders were the most recent additions and eager to earn their patch for helping to conceal a murder. The Cop gangs used to be strictly white supremacist but over the years have expanded their recruiting to Korean and African American cops with a mean streak. The Reapers watched each others backs and functioned with a military hierarchy. The South West division had a bad reputation for torture, sexual assault and suspicious deaths in the jail. Many of the gang unit cops operate with the same code of silence as the mafia. Their track record has not gone unnoticed by the community. Bumper stickers, activist graffiti and protests have been alarming the closely knit gangs. Conspiratorial dealings only work with a lack of oversight and bad press. Thorns in their side would be dealt with cruelly and deffinatively. Susanna Dominguez was the local activist. She had published several books on Chicano art, Mexican rural culture and injustices involving underserved communities where police were prone to frame local gang leaders for any crime that comes across their desk. A news report on her work Pro-bono for condemned inmates with compelling evidence of innocence got her on a list to be silenced. Coming home from a meeting with several families of police brutality deaths, she was pulled over for a broken taillight. The report said she became hostile and had some history with the officers involved. She was arrested and by the next morning was found dead. A rape kit was never done, blood tests showed high levels of opioids despite having no history of hard drug use. Her body was quietly cremated as indigent and family was never contacted until her ailing mother had some up from Calexico with her two brothers when she hadnt been heard from for weeks. Despite being on record as being arrested, she was listed as a Jane Doe. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. This was where Rockwell and Sanders eared their bones. Susanna was from a poor first generation migrants. She was a national scholar award winner in high school and obtained several degrees in college. Her books sold well and despite having been translated to 11 languages she still lived in the barrio. Owning a local taqueria and screen printing business. She employed 2 dozen undocumented families and helped organize charity drives for childhood cancer. Despite being a beloved icon, her death was swept under the rug by the local news media.The autopsy read as over dose, but bruises on her arms and neck suggest she was manhandled, this was never put in the fabricated ME report. Only people who could have opened the cell and turned off the lights in her section were the Deputies who claimed to have checked on her and left the section to play cards with the other Deputies on shift. Rockwell and Sanders were excited for their full back tattoo of the click, The Reapers. They sprung a local cholo tattoo artist named Chuche who was in custody for a gun charge. In return for fumbling the paperwork and dropping his bail to a meager sum, they extorted him for his high quality black and grey art work. The Reapers symbol was a hooded angel of death wielding a scythe, surrounded by tombstones. By 3 am the tattoos outlines were completed but they would need another appointment for shading and small details that the deputies couldnt stand to sit for. The whole time they joked about the murder of Susanna Dominguez, how she threatened legal trouble, she begged and pled when she realized they were going to administer a fatal hotshot. Their first plan was to drown her in the metal toilet in the cell but she was too ravenous and despite being two large men with athletic builds, she left both of them with scratches they had to hide from their wives. This was a common ploy of the Sheriffs gangs. Any time there was a problem with dope fiends breaking into cars, taggers straying outside the ghetto or local biker gangs trying to set up shop their answer was staged suicide. This had been going on since the 1950s but the current clicks originated by returning Vietnam vets adopting the mascot of their in country units, but with a gangster flare. In plain clothes these Sheriffs might be mistaken for gang members with bald heads, urban dress and sinister tattoos. There is always a look to cops, Hawaiian shirts or Italian suits copied from the tv show Miami Vice. There was the old guard with the village people mustaches, but the new guys looked like they stepped out of a Cypress Hill music video. Chapter 10: San Quentin Death Row Adjustment Center. A Section. North Block. Mwasi was expecting a visit from his legal team working on his appeal. His pro bono lawyer was a Chicana named Susanna Dominguez. She was brilliant, a firebrand child of the 1960s revolutionary generation. Despite being a little older with streaks of silver in her hair, she had an angelic face and for both of them it was love at first sight. Their romance had been instant, from the day they met in 1984 she had filled his thoughts. Being condemned was a hard pill to swallow, but having someone work tirelessly interviewing witnesses, trying to find legal recourse gave him his only hope. They had to send coded letters to not be found out. He wrote her exquisite poems, endless little notes. She would send him books magazines and love letters under her alias Gwen Stacy, a reference to Spiderman comics. At mail call the Watch Commander Holiday came to present some heavy news. Coming on the condemned tier always got a cacophony from the look out in cell one. Man Walking was their parody of the death row escort announcement when they were pulled from their cells for execution, Dead Man Walking. Holiday was stern but fair and kept a decent rapport with Mwasi. Despite suspecting the romance he never reported it or interfered in the politics of Death Row where rivals had to be segregated on yard. Watch Commander Holiday turned a blind eye to prune and gambling but draws the line at weapons manufacturing or hits. Their friendly banter was not the tone of the day. With a heavy heart Holiday delivered the fateful news. Mwasi knew something was terribly wrong by his demeanor. Holiday passed a note with the info of her death. Holiday said he was sorry and he was going to be on shift if Mwasi wanted an ear for support. Mwasis mind was racing. Thinking his current appeal was denied and execution date moved up with the new Republican governor. He might have even preferred that to hearing the love of his life was gone. The first woman he met who wasnt a toxic head case or paranoid drug addict. He tried to say something but his words caught in his throat. He almost broke down but maintained a stoic demeanor. Unable to control tears he turned towards the window and gave a thumbs up. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. Holiday exited the condemned section. Hearing the gates slam shut, mechanical gears of the mechanism sliding closed sounded so violent. His ears rang and the cheers of sports, jeers of momma jokes and j-cats mumbling madness was disturbing to him. Every sound like a bullet hitting his soul. Mwasi thought about the writing term, dark night of the soul. He had lost many of his closest homies, both his parents but this was heavy. He remembers the first time he really felt sick from a death, the day they announced Jimi Hendrix death. It was like reality became unreal. Suddenly he felt like his life was a movie and the screen writer kept trying to rip out his soul. Mwasi realizes he is still holding a drawing he had made for Susanna. It was a beautifully rendered drawing of her and her mother standing bellow Half Dome at Yosemite, from a picture she had sent him years before. His tears distorted the shading on the drawing. He involuntarily crunched the artwork. They had talked about moving to the Sierras if he got out. They had talked endlessly about his case, his sons case and the corrupt Sheriffs of the South West division who would block any evidence to his innocence. All for nothing, there was no way that he could build a compelling difference with a brand new legal team. None of that mattered, at that moment all his will to live flowed out of him like tears in the rain. He began crafting a letter that outlined how he planned to withdraw his plea and asks for the execution date to be moved up as soon as possible. He felt a relief in the situation he was in. He knew he didnt have the will to kill himself and knew damn well none of his enemies in here were capable of besting him in a knife fight. When Holiday did his final count, Mwasi gave him the letter to pass on to the Warden and California Supreme Court. Holiday read it and looked at him with a sympathetic eye before leaving the Condemned Unit. Chapter 11: Adult Probation Ishmael has actually been looking forward to seeing Officer Willows. He shouldnt but he cant help it. There is a glint in her eye, a concerned sweetness in her voice and what he wonders is actualy chemistry. This would be a dangerous thing to overestimate. The moment he breaks character and flirts she would recoil, likely reassigning him. Still in the back of his head he feels like there is an unmistakable vibe there. She keeps him waiting and when the called in her demeanor is off. She isnt friendly, doesnt make eye contact and seems like she is operating in auto pilot. He doesnt feel comfortable making small talk just yet. Second guessing him self as she asks the required questions about living environment, work prospects and restitution schedule. Passing him a card for her next meeting he notices scribbled note to meet her around the block in 20 minutes. He notices she has tears in her eyes and is wringing a tissue in her hands. He starts to say something and she shushes him and points to the camera and a sign, all meetings recorded. Leaving he feels kind of inspired. He doesnt know what awaits him but he things being invited to a secret meeting was promising. Still something felt off. Ishmael knows there could be something really wrong. It begins raining and he tries to stay out of the path of raindrops under a small tree. Hearing thunder and seeing a white flash in the sky unnerves him. He forgets the rule about lightning. Are you supposed to avoid trees or hide under them? While he ponders this, Office Willows pulls up and gestures him to get in. She drives for a while not saying any thing. Ishmael doesnt want to break the ice. Pulling into a coffee shop outside the range of where her fellow Officers would be likely to pop in for lunch. She orders them both a coffee while he is in the restroom. Coming back to a table she is crying. He is hesitant to comfort her as any physical contact could be misconstrued by onlookers as violence. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. Ishmael tries to take a sip of coffee but its way too hot and he drops it on the floor, slashing hot coffee all over his shirt. He goes and gets some napkins and instead of cleaning him self up. Offers it to Officer Willows to dry her tears. She gasps and catches her self. Trying to not break down. She explains her best friend was on his fathers legal team and was certain he was about to be exonerated but she was killed in police custody. Ishmael hasnt thought about his dad in a while. Almost feels like a curse he has been trying to get out from under. News reports about the case were so vicious. Made his dad sound like heartless monster. He always knew his dad was capable of of killing in mutual combat but not cold blooded murder. Ishmael remembers all the times his mother attacked his father. Never once did he batter her. She had stabbed him, shot guns at him and punched him in the face and he always laughed at her feeble attempts at violence, breaking the tension. Officer Willows has more bad news. His father had requested to die at the hands of the state and an execution date was set for 90 days away. This hit Ishmael like a ton of bricks. He knew someday it would happen but usually the executions were nearly 30 years after the case. This was less than 20, way less. Suddenly feelings he had buried for decades came flooding back. He remembered his dad taking him fishing at Big Bear, pushing him on swings at playgrounds, teaching him to read and write with graffiti on the freeway. Buying him action figures and the day he didnt come home. Arrested for a murder robbery that was the talk of all his school mates and teachers. It ripped his soul out as a small kid but he started to harden his heart. Not letting his parents evil deeds put a stain on his life. He had his own problems but he felt like goes up to the prison was a walk of shame he would have to endure. They make a plan to drive up there with the new evidence Susanna Dominguez had died trying to bring to light.